Mean World, Cold Eye
by LoveSupreme
Summary: Erik is a journalist in a small town assigned to cover the paranormal investigation of a notoriously haunted house. Not that he believes in that kind of stuff. But Charles Xavier, host of the Discovery Channel's Ghost Trackers certainly does believe in that sort of stuff. In fact, he and his investigative team have rather devoted their lives to converting disbelievers such as Erik.
1. Chapter 1

_Where does this mean world cast its cold eye?_

_Who's left to suffer long without you?_

Erik stared at the assignment waiting for him on his desk and then looked around at the rest of the office, waiting for someone to give some kind of sign that it was a horrendous practical joke. Any second Janos would struggle to keep his giveaway grin under check, or Jennifer would give Haroum a conspiratorial glance without thinking. But there was nothing. Everyone was busy with their own affairs: Janos was hissing angry things at his boyfriend through his cellphone (adding to their already uncountable number of breakups, it seemed), Jennifer was obviously nursing a hangover at the coffee counter, Haroum was fiddling with the thermostat while Jennifer wasn't looking.

Erik turned back to his assignment, this time trying to wrap his head around the fact that Emma was serious.

He had been working at the _Avalon Daily News_ under Emma Frost for the past seven years, and taking her seriously had never proved difficult before, but today, with this assignment, it was a painful stretch. Starting as a trainee journalist and then eventually taking over the Local Affairs segment, which mostly meant Local Gossip, he couldn't say this was the best job for a journalist in the entire world, but until now it had seemed mostly okay. He tempered the dullness of the job with his own personal pieces that Emma either shot down immediately or grudgingly allowed, depending on his level of unprofessional vitriol. In addition to his weekly assignments and personal campaigns he was expected to cover any assignments she deemed him fit for. Most of the time Erik was able to do his job sanely if not contently, but at the moment he regressed, and railed against his decision not to apply for a serious traineeship with BBC or Reuters or something, travel the globe as a Serious Journalist, covering the war in Afganistan or political intrigue rather than Shauna Malwae's new baby or _Mulligan's_ run in with the food inspector.

As always though, this hardship didn't push him to move to the City and take up a start-up job in the International Affairs Bureau like his father constantly suggested, but instead pushed him to vent his frustration on Emma, an exciting task but not an overly productive one.

He wouldn't be able to get her to change his assignment, he knew: this story was absolutely going to get written, more than written: obsessed over. And he rather suspected that he wouldn't be able to get her to shove the job off on another reporter, even a freelance one: she wasn't one to back down or change her mind. But he had an inkling that he could make this situation so uncomfortable for her that she quivered at the thought of making him a part of the media frenzy this article was going to start off. And that was enough for him.

Jumping to his feet, he stalked angrily to his editor's office, ignoring any curious gazes that latched onto him, and threw her door open and then loudly closed behind him.

"_What the fuck is this?"_ he shouted, liking the way it made her eyes narrow. She refused to wince at his tone, but she couldn't help the narrowing. It was the only sign he was going to get that he was succeeding in making life annoying for her.

"You know damned well what it is. Now get back to work before I replace you, you ingrate," she growled menacingly back at him, going back to her work, slashing whole paragraphs with her dreaded red pencil.

He glared carefully at her perfectly painted face, pale and austere, her stupid fucking white-blonde hair, strictly curled and determinedly flawless, even her expensively manicured nails, and took a deep breath to break her out of her complacency.

"You're out of your fucking mind! It's ridiculous! It's beneath my journalistic integrity!" he accused, watching her eyes narrow with each thrust of his shouts.

"Your last article was about the Finest Swine Pageant last week!" she reminded shrilly, eyes flaming.

"Yes but pigs exist!" he rebutted, shaking the assignment at her wrathfully.

He was shocked when Emma actually rose to his ire, snapping down her pencil and lunging up to a daunting stand in her five-inch heels. Her color was rising now, coming out on her face in angry red splotches that let him know that, somehow, he'd gone above her ability for composure.

"Let me tell you something, _sweetness_," she snarled at him. "As far as your readership is concerned, this crass shit is as real as pig pageants, and for as long as that's true you'll fucking do as you're fucking told, do you fucking understand me?!"

Shock dropped him into a nearby chair, staring widely as he tried to get his mouth back into action. Emma never took the bait. She was always coldly calm and collected, downright smug in the face of fury. And she never, _ever_ cursed.

In the silence his surprise afforded, Emma sighed heavily and collapsed back into her seat, rubbing her temples weakly. She didn't apologize for her outburst, but she did explain herself, which was as much of an apology as she was capable of.

"This story, silly as you may find it, is important, Erik. I know you don't think so, but as far as 90% of this town is concerned, the Ash Creek House is haunted as all hell." Erik winced on her behalf even though Emma didn't realize her mistake. No local called it the Ash Creek House—it was always the Gone-Away House. She continued without noticing, head practically in her hands. "Now we have Charles Xavier and the Discovery Channel showing an interest for _Ghost Trackers_. It's not a show you watch, or that I watch for that matter, but it's a serious television program to be played on national TV, and that's big news for this town, and it's our job to cover big news, ridiculous though it may be. If we don't snap it up, _Moira MacTaggert_ will, and I refuse to be bested by that woman—again."

Erik was surprised. This was as close as Emma had ever come to mentioning her rival at _The Sentinel's_ snooping out a national news story right out from under her. It wasn't every day a prostitution ring was uncovered in one's town, and when that town was dowdy old Avalon the odds went even further far afield. Emma hadn't shown her face in the office for nearly a week. Erik was fairly certain one could either be fired or shanked for saying "Hellfire Club" within her hearing.

So Erik knew not to say that, but he wasn't sure what he should say, so he ended up grumbling a sort of uncomfortable, "Jeeze, Em," while glancing wistfully at the door.

He'd come in there to make her uncomfortable enough to not want to put either of them through this again, but now that the tables were turned he was eager enough to make a wash of it and take his assignment with only some serious grumbling. Instead, the woman kept talking, and since this scenario had never happened to him before, he didn't know what to do but sit and take it.

"If you had any idea the sort of underhanded, clever things I had to do to get us an inside track with this stupid ghost-hunting, you'd—" Emma stopped herself, shaking her head almost wearily. "This is a big deal for us, Erik. The sort of thing that's going to keep Moira playing catch-up with us for the next _six months_. While she's sitting over there on Ashton guessing her way through article after article, quoting fucking press releases, we're going to be running this show with facts, quotes, insider information." She glared at him heatedly, icy blue eyes gleaming. "You _will_ put your personal feelings aside and give me the story I want. The story I deserve, Erik."

Erik glowered at the arm of his chair, and Emma seemed to see this as a cue to go on.

"You are going to pick him up at his hotel tomorrow morning. You are going to take him to the House, you are going to watch everything he does. You are going to give this town exactly want it wants. I want ominous. I want terrifying. I want to have to write a disclaimer on the front page warning people with heart conditions or weak constitutions against reading your article. Do I make myself very clear?"

Erik shifted his glare to the demanding woman instead, but she just smiled with satisfaction.

"I see that you do. Now, get out of here. And if you please me very much, I promise to give the story to Janos when the film crew comes to town."

"No."

Emma's face, just lowering to get back to work, jerked back up to stare at him dangerously.

"Keeping me out of this mess when it hits the fan? That earns you me writing a decent story that doesn't offend the town to the point where they come firebombing your door. An amazing story, the story that's going to shove Moira in the dust for six months? That's going to cost you."

"Oh Erik," the woman sighed, sitting back in her chair and eying him over steepled manicured fingers. "This must be why I'm so in love with you."

"Must be," he grinned back. It wasn't the case that Emma was in any way in love with him, he wasn't sure she was capable of so human an emotion, but he would admit that he was closer to her than he was to most women, and she was closer to him than she was to most mortals.

"All right, all right," she beamed evilly. "You'll get your just desserts."

Erik was in a pissy mood after work, even though he'd shirked ghost-duty all day long, preferring to look busy by starting an article of his own devising about workplace abuse. As the day progressed, Emma was getting more and more anxious, and thus more and more demanding. Meanwhile, the news had broken on the article and the rest of the office saw this as an opportunity to quell their midday boredom by teasing Erik.

He'd dealt with a wallpaper that kept changing to Casper, prank calls of the Ghostbuster's theme, and even a little ghost doll sitting at his desk when he returned from the bathroom. Janos was the only one not getting in on the fun, but he hadn't made the day any more pleasant, apparently hoping to seduce him into making his (ex?)boyfriend jealous. Erik knew better than to get involved with a coworker, especially one as dramatic as Janos.

"Get a good night's rest," Emma demanded as he was putting on his slicker in preparation for the torrential downpour outside. "I want you fresh-faced for the ghost-hunter tomorrow." She gave the air that she'd be over to check on him to make sure he was following orders.

Erik decided then and there to get blinding drunk that night. He called Mark, his only friend and crush, to join him but the man was busy consoling his twin that night.

"She's pre-tty pissed that Fross stole this story out from unner her. I think she might wan' me t'rrest your boss. Or you. Or whoever it takes to steal the ghost-hunner back from ya." By the hushed tones, Erik guessed Mark was hiding his call, possibly in the bathroom based on the slight reverberations of the man's grassroots accent. If there were one thing Erik could change about Mark, besides his distressing heterosexuality, it was damnable accent. It wormed its way into _every_ local, a stark demarcation between the towner and tourist. It, along with his penchant for expensive suits, was the main reason even seasoned Avalonians sometimes mistook him for a visitor, despite the fact that his family had been living there practically since they got off the boat.

"Yeah well, take her advice. I'd rather be in your lockup all day than follow that dolt around for a full minute," he sighed back over the phone as he scoped out acceptable Scotch at Liquor Supercenter. They had a 20 year old Glenkinchie but it was $200. He kept looking.

"I wouldn' have time t'rrest you—Fross would kill ya."

"I think I might prefer that too. I've got to pick him up at his fucking hotel at nine in the fucking morning and chauffeur him all around town or whatever he wants. It's ridiculous."

Mark's tone took on a hushed, awed air. "So it's really him? I mean, the lead guy? Charles Zavier? Not one-a the side-crew, I mean, but like _the main guy?!"_

Erik tensed uncomfortably in his dripping slicker. He'd had his fingers crossed for years that Mark would wake up and decide to at least give cock a try, and if this miracle came true just for Mark to waste it on some TV-hoaxer, Erik was sure he'd go on a killing spree.

He pushed the ridiculousness aside and grabbed a bottle of Famous Grouse.

"Emma said his name was Xavier, so if that's the main guy..."

"_You don't know?!"_

"Emma gave me an information packet but I haven't opened it on principle and don't plan to."

"Well are you gonna at least watch the show 'fore you go out there with him?"

"Not likely. I've got Scotch Whiskey in my hand and _Poltergeist_ on my DVD shelf. I'd say I've got the night pretty much full up. Unless you were feeling like coming over, of course…"

"No thanks, Casanova. I got a sisser to talk down from murder, especially when she finds out they gave the gig ta _you_."

"I can't help it if she doesn't like me."

"The choke-hole may-a bin a bit much."

"It was my first cat-fight, I didn't know what I was doing."

"Here's a hint for the next time Moira and Fross get inta it: don't put nobody in no choke-hole."

"I'll make a note of that."


	2. Chapter 2

The rain had cleared by the morning, and the news channel even insisted it would get up into the nineties, although based on the current chill and dark, bloated clouds, Erik didn't see how that was at all possible. Hung over and miserable, he glared out of his living room window: his skinny driveway, his skinny duplex-neighbor wading through last night's deluge to nab his floating morning paper. He was too pessimistic to trust that the day would get any better, and set out his thick rain jacket before turning off his TV more violently than was necessary to stalking back upstairs to take a very hot shower. Under the spray, he tried to shake the memories of a night full of weird dreams. The most vivid involved him following Zelda Rubenstein around the Gone-Away House (which he'd never actually seen in person so his mind filled it in with his childhood home) and getting stuck in a closet portal and instead of helping him get out Rubenstein/Xavier just called the producers and started cackling about ratings.

Even though there was no one to impress, he dressed with his usual care: slacks, dress shirt, waistcoat. There were exactly ten eligible gay men in Avalon and Erik had slept with exactly eight of them-he was saving the other two for a special occasion, or until he couldn't help it. It was tough, working with these kind of limited options, but he made do, staging runs up to the bars in the City every few months to wrangle a new bed partner or two. Erik wasn't a prude when it came to these things, and he didn't understand people's sexual hangups any more than he understood their fascination with the so-called paranormal.

If they wanted to get tricked by charlatans like Charles Xavier it was up to them, and if they wanted boring Puritan sex lives then more power to them so long as they didn't try to stand in the way of his sodomy and one-night stands.

He was just double-checking the battery on his tape-recorder and provisioning his satchel when Emma called.

"You better be on your way over there. The last thing I need is for Moira to snatch him up while you're putzing around with your thumb up your ass," she threatened.

"I thought we agreed not to discuss my sex-life," he joked, but she wasn't in the joking mood.

"Get over there before I turn _you_ into a ghost," she growled, and hung up.

This rivalry must really be getting to her. Normally her threats were much more underhanded, certainly less hysterical.

Sighing with the weight of his own intense distaste for the situation his job had managed to get him into, he pulled on his jacket and drove off to meet his doom, hoping at every second that someone would crash into him and hospitalization would save him from Xavier's stupidity as well as Emma's wrath.

The Dew Drop Inn was built in the 80s and, as far as Erik knew, it had never been updated since then. The color scheme where it hadn't faded was orange and green. There was a lot of wood paneling. There were heavy polyester curtains everywhere. Anything that could be floral printed was floral printed.

The Inn was set up on an L base with two stories. Not knowing what room Xavier was in, and seeing as it was a little after nine, Erik parked and jogged into the lobby. There were a lot of locals milling around sauntering into or out of the restaurant at the other end of the lobby but Erik didn't see any pasty ghost-hunter sitting around on the floral couches.

Anyone else in town would have probably known Xavier's birthday and shoe size, but Erik realized he didn't even know what the guy looked like and found that he didn't really care. He walked up to the reception counter where Lucia was leaning her breasts toward him and popping her bubble gum loudly.

"Ain' seen you round inna while. You here fer brekfist?"

"I might stop in for a bit," Erik nodded, glancing at the bustling diner, a heady scent of grease making his stomach grumble. It apparently wanted to be repaid for the abuse of Scotch and more Scotch last night. "I'm actually meeting someone here."

"Ohhh," Lucia drawled with a wide grin, gum popping between her teeth. "So iss our famous guess is got you sniffin' round. Mose these people showin up hopin' ta catch a glimse uh him. I thot you dinnit believe in ghoss?"

"I don't," he replied darkly. "Is he around?"

"Ain' seen 'im. Muss still be in 'is room, right?"

Erik rubbed his eyes. Trying to appear more fully awake. At least the idiot wouldn't know he'd been late, then. Or maybe Moira had shown up bright and early and kidnapped him and Emma was at this very moment on her way to assassinate him for losing his story.

"What room is he in?" he asked in a miserable groan, and hardly waited for Lucia to tell him before he rushed back outside and up to the second story rooms.

There was no one hanging around outside Xavier's room, and Erik listened outside the door a moment trying to decide if the man had already run off with another journalist. But he couldn't really tell if he was hearing things from inside this room or a neighboring one and didn't want to be caught out there just listening like a weirdo, so he knocked, awkwardly glancing back at where the sun was burning through all the low-level clouds. He wished he'd brought his sunglasses: it was starting to look like the weather boy had been right about today being a secret scorcher.

When Charles Xavier answered his door a second later Erik turned just in time for his brain to fizzle out trying to take it all in.

Although he had known of course that the chances of the man actually looking like Zelda Rubenstein had been meager, his subconscious had still rather gone along with it. He had been thinking of someone short, squat, and sporting a possible helium-influenced voice box, maybe some awkward facial hair thrown in there just for masculinity's sake.

Instead he got small, compact and surprisingly attractive. And brushing his teeth. And half dressed.

A cursory look informed him of dark brown hair, swept back in lengthy half-curls from his expressive brow, electric blue eyes, and a dark, alluring mouth pursed around a lemon-yellow toothbrush. The rest of him earned more than a cursory glance. Xavier's shirt was unbuttoned, untucked, a despicably thin wife-beater hid none of the contours of the man's surprisingly well-developed chest and stomach. His belt was undone around sturdy hips, and very provocative for it. Yet Erik couldn't be sure his mind had given itself over completely to finding Xavier attractive until he saw the way the man was looking at him.

The man leaned into the door jamb, hand still holding the toothbrush in the pursed grip of deeply red lips, and absolutely _raked _his eyes up Erik's frame until he could feel it like a heavy touch. When he reached Erik's eyes he didn't shy away but beamed into his gaze, had a way of smiling even though his mouth was still busy with his toothbrush.

It was the most lustful gaze Erik had ever encountered, and he made a habit of picking up men in sleazy gay dance clubs. He wasn't sure if the desire that erupted and writhed violently in his gut was in response to the attractiveness of the man or the attractiveness of being lusted after so obviously but, either way, he found it hard to stand firmly.

The brunet finally pulled his toothbrush away, smirking, and said "Room service, I hope?" in the kind of voice that shivered up to Erik's brain through his spine rather than via his ears.

Once it arrived his brain it refused to make sense, though.

"Whu?" he gulped, a moment before his brain translated the statement.

Xavier swiped the pad of his thumb across the foam on his bottom lip and Erik couldn't help but follow every movement of the process.

"Or maybe you're someone from the _Sentinel_, come to steal me away from the _Avalon Daily_? In which case, _please_, consider me stolen."

The glint in the man's eyes hadn't abated, but rather sparked anew as he took the opportunity to get another gander at Erik from heel to head. Erik forced himself to recover from his school-boy fumblings by sheer willpower and mental reminder that this was the same man who believed _Casper the Friendly Ghost_ was practically a documentary. He found it in his power to scoff and grin back.

"It's nice to know you're such a steadfast friend. I'm Erik Lensherr from the ADN and I'll be your babysitter for the day," he greeted, extending a hand. The man took it readily, and Erik half-expected some sort of lewd caressing but the handshake was firm and respectable, if intensely electric.

"I've always had a thing for babysitters," Xavier admitted, still grinning cheekily. "I'm Charles Xavier. It's a real pleasure to meet you."

"It truly saddens me that you are idiotically interested in the supernatural. I'll meet you in the diner downstairs once you're more...clothed."

He had just been moderately rude to a highly attractive and unfortunately stupid _young_ man (much younger than Erik had been imagining), so before he had to face any offense, he turned and took his leave, feeling with absolute certainty that Xavier was checking out his ass as he walked away.


	3. Chapter 3

Erik was hungry, and nursing a gnawing hangover, so he ordered without Xavier, drinking his coffee with more anger than was necessary.

Fate loathed him. It was the only explanation for someone as attractive as Xavier being as attracted to him as Xavier obviously was and yet being as stupid as Xavier undoubtedly was. Erik wasn't exactly picky: there were only twenty-nine gay men in this entire town as far as he knew and out of that he had deemed a full ten of them as appropriate to screw. He could find it in himself to sleep with men who acted more like women, men who were more interested in sports than sex, men who were terribly dull and men who were annoyingly superficial (unless they worked with him, sorry Janos).

But he would never find it in himself to sleep with an idiot, and Charles Xavier was unfortunately an idiot. What else could you call a grown man who believed in ghost stories-not just believed in them but believed in them enough to devote his life to _proving _them? Who tried to convert other people into believing in them?

Well, he'd interview the man, he thought hopefully on his second coffee. Maybe Xavier was only a television whore of a fraud rather than a true-believer. Maybe he'd simply seen an opening in this ghost nonsense and was milking it for all it was worth. He could sleep with a fraud, so long as he was a smart fraud. He wasn't looking for a good person, just a good lay. If he managed to get a good story out of it at the same time, so be it. Shaw had pretty much told him he could say whatever he wanted in his article. If that meant an article about the ghost-hunting fraud of a nymphomaniac then he'd at least enjoy this writing stint.

Granny came up with his food, breaking him out of his reverie and wheezing out enough breath to talk to him. The woman was ancient and humongous—was seemingly too old and too big to be working like this, but the diner was buzzing, apparently to the point where even she was called into duty.

"You goin' ghost-huntin' with the TV guy?" she grunted, out of breath from the walk from the counter to his table. Erik frowned into her girth, which was substantial enough to block his view of the front door. Hell, it blocked his view of the front half of the restaurant.

"Yeah, it's looking that way," he sighed unhappily, breaking the yolks of his eggs and breathing in the healing scent of grease and protein.

"I thot you dinnit believe in ghose stuff?"

"I don't," was his firm response.

"Your mama'll be rollin' in her grave," Granny cackled and Erik grimaced at the crudeness of it but replied.

"Her and every other mother down there, I'm sure."

Most of the children in town had been warned against the Gone-Away House since they could toddle. When dares forced them onto the premises in childhood it was hard to say what they were more frightened of: ghosts or their mothers. Erik hadn't even bothered to fool around with that. While his friends got a good whacking for their antics Erik's knew his mother wasn't going to stop at a wooden spoon. He'd never found out if she just didn't want him annoying the Lovegoods, the only family crazy enough to actually live in the Gone-Away House (although, the crass joke went, they'd soon Gone-Away themselves) or if she really believed something evil lurked in the house itself.

Regardless of her unexplained reasons, he'd never been tempted to defy her.

But his reticence was not because he was afraid of ghosts, it was because he was afraid of his mother, who wielded a fate much worse than any supernatural being could wreak upon him. Even after she'd died he'd never considered thwarting her steel will.

Before Granny could offend him further, a chipper British voice was lilting, "Good morning, Granny! How is your day going?"

Granny shifted her weight laboriously, revealing Xavier to view. The man had changed into a pair of light gray summer slacks, a matching suit jacket folded over his arm. Hanging it on the back of the chair across from Erik, he slipped into the seat gracefully. He crossed his legs, one knee over the other and Erik found it so erotic that it pissed him off even further, lust funneling into wrath.

If he was going to force himself to not sleep with this man, couldn't the guy at least give him a break and not be so goddamned attractive?

"Yeah, good 'nough," Granny wheezed back.

"I started without you," Erik interrupted to explain. "Are you eating breakfast?"

"I think I shall," Xavier nodded, folding his paper napkin over his lap delicately. His hands were broad and careful and Erik wondered what they'd be like digging into his spine as he drove into that tight British body. He gulped down a hot mouthful of coffee and winced. This was getting out of hand and it hadn't even started yet. "Do you have any suggestions?"

Erik turned to Granny so he could stop looking at the brunet across from him.

"Get him the special," Erik told her, and she huffed a nod, waddled away.

The busboy brought water and the man ordered some tea, was confused when he wasn't asked what kind he wanted. Erik explained that there was only one kind: Lipton. Xavier pulled a face that Erik forced him not to think of as adorable and ordered a coffee.

"You changed your clothes," Erik pointed out when they were alone, mopping up yolk with his toast.

"You're very astute," Xavier grinned back at him with those shining blue eyes. Erik kept his eyes on his meal; it was less likely to try to seduce him out of his standards. "Your news program assured me it was going to be sweltering today, so I thought tweed might be a tad much."

"It doesn't have anything with trying to get into my pants, then?" Erik mused. It was much easier to banter when he didn't have to look at the man.

"Unfortunately not, although I do still have my sights rather set on it."

"So you can seduce me into writing a glowing review of your work, I'm sure," he sneered playfully. Teasing and playfulness, next to sarcasm, he'd found, were the best methods to get away with offending someone.

"So I can seduce you into having sex with me, really," Xavier corrected and Erik sputtered a moment, had to glance up to see if he was being serious. The man was smiling, the light of it catching in his eyes; it was hard to tell.

"That's a bit...straightforward," he grumbled, fidgeting a bit in his seat.

"Do you not like it? I could try to stop. I'm afraid I have a habit of thinking people prefer honesty more than they actually do."

Erik frowned into his eggs, not sure if he wanted the man to stop or not. On the one hand it was awkwardly candid, but on the other it was a little flattering to have someone just come out and tell him they desired him. Refreshing, really, in a way Erik was surprised to find he sort of liked. He wasn't sure he wanted to admit to liking it just yet, though. Much as he admired being able to analyze his pursuers acts in a clear light, he preferred to keep his own actions a bit more shadowy than that.

"Honestly," Xavier continued, giving up on an answer. "I've never understood why people insist on being so cloak-and-dagger when it comes to sex. A left-over from the Puritans, I suppose. Thank god for alcohol or I suppose we'd never get over our natural priggishness."

"I'm not priggish," Erik balked. Never in his slutty, slutty life had anyone ever accused him of such.

"I didn't say you were. Well, I did, but I more implied that everyone is a little priggish, until alcohol gives them excuses to be adventurous, normally. I suppose I've just gotten rather tired of the excuses and so I tend to skip them without realizing."

"So you're a slut without the additive of alcohol, is what you're saying," Erik accused teasingly.

"'Slut' is just a term prudes use to make one feel guilty about having a sex-life," Xavier laughed back rather dismissively.

His food finally came, which Erik was thankful for because it got them off the discussion of sex and its social mores. And the fact that Xavier was apparently only an idiot when it came to the supernatural. He wasn't allowed to sleep with idiots, but what was his stance on half-idiots? Erik wasn't sure.

Xavier tucked into his biscuits and gravy without complaint, despite the heft of calories and carbs and grease. Erik wondered if he was city-boy ghost-hunter or a country-boy ghost-hunter. If his bitterness had allowed him to look at that damned dossier he'd already know, and felt badly about being so unprepared. Last night coming to work woefully unlearned seemed passive-aggressively just. Now it left him nervous. Normally he was extremely professional when it came to interviews, did all his background work well ahead of time. Lacking that buttressing, especially against someone as verbally deft as Xavier, left him uneasy. This anxiety, along with his writhing lust, could only be hidden with gruffness.


	4. Chapter 4 Part 1

"Do you mind if we start?" Erik requested when their table was cleared, pulling out his tape recorder and notebook.

"Not at all. Did you want to do it here? Or in my room?"

Erik gave the man a chastising low-level glare, but Xavier only smiled easily back, as if he weren't being purposefully suggestive. It was true that it was a bit loud in here, that everyone was glancing at them, looking as if the slightest opening would tempt them into rushing the brunet and requesting an autograph, but on the other hand Erik didn't trust either of them to be in a hotel room alone together.

"Here's just fine," Erik assured witheringly. He pressed record and flipped to the right page of his miniature notebook, reading his drunken shorthand of interview questions.

"So, Charles Xavier, Ghost Tracker. How do you think that such nonsense gets a running TV show?"

He could feel Xavier looking at him carefully even though he kept his own eyes safely on his paper.

"I fear that I am misunderstanding you, perhaps," the Brit suggested demurely.

Annoyed that the man could be so forthcoming when it came to talk about wanting to fuck him but suddenly turned into a shrinking violet when it came to defending his work, Erik pinned him with a glare.

"I _mean_, you have a show on the Discovery Channel about running around chasing figments of the imagination. Doesn't that at all embarrass you?"

Charles smiled, shrugged smoothly.

"_Jersey Shore_ got through six seasons. So no, I'm not really embarrassed by my show at all."

"There's worse things you could watch, you're saying."

"It's not what I'm attempting to say, but it's a statement I would agree with."

"But _Jersey Shore_ is a real-life event dealing with actual people in the actual world," Erik pointed out.

Charles' eyebrows quirked as if he were trying to find a difficult line of code in a mass of nonsense and Erik realized the brunet had amazingly expressive eyebrows. He turned back to his paper and tried hard to ignore the man on the other end of the table.

"I think perhaps I know what you're driving at, but I would much prefer that you just ask outright."

"Do you believe in ghosts?"

"Absolutely," Charles agreed cheerfully. A glance showed that brow clearing of all confusion. The man seemed to find himself on much firmer footing with this turn of the conversation.

Erik was disappointed that he was in fact dealing with an idiot and that he could sound so certain in his idiocy.

"I mean," Charles continued. "After all the evidence I've gathered it would be a pretty big stretch to insist that they _don't _exist."

Erik just stared. What the hell was he dealing with here? 'Evidence'? How could you have evidence for something that didn't exist?

"What do you mean, evidence?"

Charles' eyes glinted suspiciously. "You haven't actually seen my show, have you?" he accused.

Erik blushed, feeling like his teacher had just caught him without his homework. His embarrassment made him meaner than he otherwise might have been. "Well, _The Bachelorette _was on and I'm only allowed to watch one piece of trash a week."

Xavier didn't rise to the bait, just continued to look at him like an interesting science project.

"I'm confused," the Brit admitted. "Are you saying that you disapprove of my show, distrust my findings, and disavow my premises without ever actually having _seen _the program?"

Glaring, Erik could feel his cheeks burning. But he still refused to be cowed by the weight of his own shame. He should _not _be ashamed: this hot _charlatan _should be ashamed.

"Do I need to read _Mein Kampf_ to know it's anti-Semitic trash? Do I need to see _Transformers_ to know it's a hyped-up fireworks show?"

"That's not quite what we're talking about here. In your analogy you have previous knowledge of _Mein Kampf_ and Michael Bay to know what to expect: you know the history of Adolf Hitler and I'm assuming have at least heard a review of Bay. I'm interested to know if you have a similar background in paranormal research?"

"How do you mean?"

"What is it, exactly, that you think I do?"

Erik thought about it for a moment, using a sip of water as an excuse to take a breath. This was becoming a lot more of a discussion than an actual interview. He tried to put it back on course.

"Why don't you explain to our readers exactly what it is you _do _do?"

Charles smiled knowingly but allowed it.

"All right. Well, when I first got into this line of work, we relied heavily on volunteer participation. By that I mean that average people suffering from what they imagined to be paranormal dissonance would call us and we'd use that opportunity to research their disturbances. So in those days we were simply going out into the normal populace's homes looking for data. Some of the cases were extremely interesting; most were false-alarms. The problem was that these people of course wanted us to get _rid _of their disturbances. Well that's doable in false-alarms: replace old wiring, fix leaks, quiet infrasound—"

"What is infrasound?"

"Oh, well, it's a low-level noise, usually between about 7 and 19 Hz, and it normally has strange, sort of other-worldly effects on the brain. Completely scientific, and easy enough to fix once you know where the sound is coming from. One house, up in Jonestown, had been haunted ever since they installed electric light. The power box they installed was making a pipe vibrate. It created about seventeen Hz. Once we replaced the pipe we never had another complaint about the place; really interesting stuff."

"But you said that you _did _believe in ghosts-this is just mind-games."

"I'm not sure if mind-games is the correct word, but I see what you're driving at. While the majority of our cases, both then and now, have perfectly normal explanations, some have paranormal ones. Those are the ones we really hunt for. The haunting down in Raleigh from season one, the Norfolk House from the season finale. Amazing findings..."

"What do you mean, findings? You said you had evidence?"

"Yes, precisely. Well, you'd be absolutely astounded at the amount of evidence there is for the paranormal and yet it's still seen as outside the scope or interest of mainstream science. It really boggles the mind. I mean, we have temperature readings, electronic signatures, sometimes even _voice _recordings, pictures, video! It's really a bit like Galileo running to the church with a photograph from the Hubble space telescope and still getting laughed out. Sometimes it's very disheartening, but now that we have the Discovery Channel as a venue it really feels like we're finally starting to make some progress. Less crackpots knocking on our doors. More legitimate hauntings. We can really focus our energy now, and that's certainly worth any…well…ahem."

"You keep saying we," Erik pointed out, letting Xavier off the hook for his awkward trailing off.

"Well, yes, me and my team. I certainly couldn't do all this work by myself, and I honestly don't know where I'd be without their support."

Erik wanted to ask about them, but he didn't want to lose train of this line of questioning. He'd have the whole rest of the day to ask about his team, what they did, and why they weren't here driving the fool out to old houses and putting up with his sexual advances.


	5. Chapter 4 Part 2

"If ghosts did actually exist wouldn't we have heard about by now?" Erik argued and Xavier actually looked energetically frustrated at that, sipping his water and putting it back a little too forcefully.

"That's exactly what I'm trying to explain: we _have _heard about it by now! I don't think you have another scientific arena on Earth that has so much evidence behind it and yet is still excluded from the realm of legitimate study."

"But I'm talking about actual evidence," Erik argued. "Not stay-at-home moms who insist their refrigerator eats baby souls."

"I don't know another way to say this to you: we have more evidence of ghosts than we have of dark matter, of Alpha Centauri, of deep sea life! We have more evidence today to support the paranormal than Galileo did for heliocentricity in 1615!"

The man was really getting excitable, eyes shining, cheeks flushed a warm glowing pink. It was incredibly reminiscent of sex and the more attractive Xavier became the angrier Erik got. His natural dickishness took over.

"But it's easy to come up with evidence when you're the one making it all up," Erik pressed on.

Charles looked about as if he had been slapped in the face. Erik thought for a moment he'd simply get up and walk out, straight to the Sentinel and turn himself over to Moira MacTaggert out of pure offense. But after a second he retorted with, "That is the most ridiculous sort of libelous trash I have had the misfortune to hear lately, Mr. Lensherr. I hope _you _have evidence to support your estimation that I am a fraud and a quack."

"If you have evidence that says that something impossible is _possible _then what other option is there other than fraudulence and forgery?"

"How about the chance that we have simply mislabeled the paranormal as something impossible? I'll give you an example; I'll try to give you an example," Charles assured, mind apparently racing. "Science doesn't understand why we dream. Is the brain simply goofing off in its down time? Is it the mind's way of half-heartedly processing all of the sensations still flooding it despite sleep: touch, taste, smell, et cetera? We simply don't know. But would you say dreaming is _impossible_? Just because we don't understand it?"

"No, I'd say there's a _logical _explanation!" Erik volleyed.

"All _I'm _saying is that maybe the paranormal _is _the logical explanation. Maybe it's not all the old-wive's tales we've been confusing it with. Sometimes _Grant _is buried in Grant's tomb."

Erik started, head quirking in his confusion. "…I don't follow you."

"I mean, sometimes a thing is exactly what you think it is. There's no trick question, no convoluted excuse-sometimes the answer is exactly what you'd think the answer would be."

Erik gave them both a couple seconds to breathe before he moved on.

"How did you get into this-" he almost said 'nonsense', then decided his antagonism was getting out of hand. "-this line of work?"

Charles relaxed back into his chair from where he'd tensed during their heated discussion.

"My father died when I was very young," he said.

"And his ghost visited you?" Erik couldn't resist snarking. Charles rolled his eyes but was grinning.

"No, that was the problem." When he saw Erik didn't understand he continued. "I would have loved for his ghost to visit me. My nanny or sister would always tell me ghost stories, mostly trying to scare me, of course. But I wasn't scared. It made me hopeful. It made me think that what I had thought of as the end wasn't really, it was just a movement into a different tenet of life, level two, however you want to describe it. And if only I could access that second plane, or it could access me, then I'd still have a father."

"So you were junior ghost-hunter? Searching for your dad?"

"We prefer paranormal researcher, or investigator if you must."

"Of course," Erik replied facetiously. Charles glared at him slightly, reached over, and turned off the recorder.

"What about you?" he asked before Erik could balk fully.

"What _about _me?"

"Didn't you ever think about the afterlife when your mother died?"

Erik jerked in his chair, staring wildly.

"_Who the fuck-_"

"You and Granny were talking about it when I walked in, don't you remember? She said that your mother would be rolling in her grave."

Erik shifted uncomfortably, trying to relax his tight muscles and mostly failing.

"She died when I was fifteen. I was a bit too old for ghost-stories at that point," he said gruffly.

"I don't mean ghosts. I mean, didn't you ever wonder what had happened to her afterwards?"

"Nothing happened to her, she just died," Erik growled, eyes flashing.

"You don't believe in an afterlife at all?"

"_No_."

"Oh...well then we have rather a non-starter, don't we?" the Brit laughed. "I mean honestly this whole time I've been arguing the tenet when we aren't even agreed upon the precept!" Xavier laughed harder, completely jovial, like this conversation was a comedy show rather than an intense, aggravating discussion. "I mean, it's like arguing about steak when you don't even believe in cows!"

Erik tried not to grin because he didn't find any of this funny; it was purely the infectiousness of the laugh that was getting to him. He bit the inside of his mouth to keep it under control and stared at Xavier studiously as the man wiped his eyes with an actual handkerchief.

"You're a strange fish, Charles Xavier," he sighed at last, mind finding no collusion on the man. "And how someone as confusing as you ever got on TV is stranger still. Apparently a British accent and a cute face is all you need these days."

Xavier controlled his laughter in order to just sit back and beam at him.

"You think I'm cute then, do you?"

Erik answered through an embarrassing amount of spluttering. "I meant objectively! _Not_ that I personally think that your face is...cute..."

The man let him off the hook, unpinning him from his electric gaze by glancing at his watch.

"Well," the Brit sighed happily. "Are we going to flirt all day or do you want to see a not-haunted house?"

"I'm not flirting with you!" Erik balked, fumbling with his wallet.

"Really? I guess my mind has a habit of considering heated discussions as foreplay."

Erik took a long drag of water. He was not going to survive this day.


	6. Chapter 5

"What is in this thing?" Erik huffed under the weight of the duffel bag Charles had tossed to him to stow in the trunk.

"It's chocker-bock full of condoms," the man joked, hopping jovially into the passenger's seat with his smaller bag. Erik just shook his head, rubbing his face. It took a full twenty minutes to drive to the Gone-Away House—twenty minutes alone with the man at close quarters. Once there they would be overseen by the House's caretaker (a little old volunteer from the Historical Society whose history presentations Erik had slept through many a time in his childhood). He should be safe enough in her cock-shrinking presence. In the meantime, he found himself wishing he'd kept the bear mace Mark had given him. But he guessed that wouldn't really work in an enclosed space anyway.

Sure enough the moment he was behind the wheel the little brunet was rubbing up against his shoulder, pretending to fiddle with the radio. Erik pushed him off immediately with a gruff "Stop it." The other man laughed, but did sit back in his seat making a show of behaving, hands obediently in his lap. Still, even with the won space, Charles' presence wormed its way under his skin: the weight and mass of the brunet nearby, the smell of his cologne, light and clean, the sight of his pale, small fingers worrying the hem of his gray slacks. They looked soft, and Erik had an image of himself reaching over, putting his hand on the inside of Charles' thigh, feeling the heat and texture there, hearing the man's sigh, surprised but pleased, triumphant.

He gripped the steering wheel that much tighter, the throb in his skull spiking to a sharp pain as he grit his teeth.

"So what do you know about the Gone-Away House?" he questioned gruffly, trying to keep his eyes solely on the road. His will-power didn't hold out long: as Charles turned in his seat he found he had to look, taking in a glimpse of the man's furrowed brows and shining, pale eyes. He turned away again, realizing how dry his mouth was, wishing he'd brought some water along.

"I thought we were going to the Ash Creek House? How many haunted houses do you people have?"

"None," Erik grinned back and when he went to give the man a sarcastic glance he saw that Charles was giving him one back and had to bite down on a traitorous laugh. "Only tourists call it the Ash Creek House."

"But I am a tourist," Charles reminded, smile evident even his voice.

"Alright," he agreed. "Then I'll give you the whole Tourist Spiel:"

The Tourist Spiel was a practically rote memorized verse that every towner knew. It was really more of a Community Memory Project than a Tourist Spiel at all since Avalon got so few tourists to begin with. There was the spring and summer crowd who couldn't afford to go any place nicer, they had a decent German community that put on a pretty good Octoberfest every fall, and then there were the normal farm-related draws: county fairs, pig shows, 4F rallies, etc. Some people came to go camping up at Mount Nebo. Most were only vaguely aware that Avalon had a haunted house, and it was to these few that the Tourist Spiel was directed, as a sort of cultural awareness lesson.

"No thank you," Charles cut him off with, stoppering the words in his throat before he could even amass the proper sinister anticipation that his boy scout leader had always taught him to imbibe it with.

"What do you mean, 'no thank you'?" he balked. "Do you want to hear about the Gone-Away House or not?"

"Not," Charles insisted stubbornly. "I want to go in completely unbiased."

"You're not unbiased: you believe in ghosts and think the place is haunted. That's biased."

"Yes but if I have the history first I might try to explain my findings, and that's not my job."

Erik looked at him with all the confusion he could muster, which was plenty, and Charles continued, blushing slightly. Erik turned back to the yellow lines on the road, refusing to let himself think of it as endearing.

"My job is to get these phenomena on tape, not muddle about with motives. Backstory tends to prime one for a certain translation of data. Given an element of ambiguity, your mind filters the confusion through preconceived notions: the human brain gives you what it thinks you're looking for."

"Like ghosts."

"Of course! If you think I disagree that researchers have gotten carried away with their own beliefs, you're mad. I'm not saying it's their fault, even: you're so steeped in ghost stories you start to see spirits everywhere. I'd say it's much the same with you: you block out spirituality in so many cases that it'd be hard for you to accept it even if you met with it face to face. It's why all our data has to be verifiable. Nothing is swayed by over sentimentality or cynicism. Our photos, videos, audio tracks, even our electric and temperature readings, go through third-party interpreters."

"You make it sounds like a viable science."

"For me and my audience it is. I can't help what idiots like you think."

Erik balked violently. "_Me_, an idiot!"

"Unfortunately," Charles sighed sadly. "If it makes you feel better I've never met a more attractive idiot."

"_I'm_ not an idiot: _you're _an idiot," Erik growled back, strangling the steering wheel.

Charles just shrugged and continued.

"Really, what would you call it when one man simply collects data and is drawn to the conclusion that the data demands whereas the other man refutes hard evidence in favor of churlish prejudice?"

"So in this debate you're the hard-nosed scientist and I'm what? The hysterical extremist?"

"Yes, precisely," Charles agreed with an energetic smile.

"Mainstream science has my back. _You're _the fringeline. That means I'm right and _you're _the idiot."

"If that were true then every minority on earth would be conquerable on the intellectual plane purely for lack of numbers."

"I don't normally take the part of the majority in the oppression of the minority, but in your case I'm going to make an exception so long as it means that_ I_ am the discerning one here and _you_ are the simpleton."

Charles scowled at him carefully and then suddenly stopped. "Fine. You think I'm an idiot and I think you're an idiot. Our dissimilar beliefs cancel each other out and thus neither of us is an idiot."

Erik was about to burst that quaint bubble, but then stopped himself.

If he allowed this philosophical precept then Charles would not technically be an idiot. Erik was allowed to sleep with idiots who weren't technically idiots, he was _absolutely _sure.

He grinned wide across the console at the smaller man and Charles fidgeted slightly under his gaze, smiling back a little nervously.

"What is it?"

"Nothing. I just hope you can contort your body as well as you do your mind."

The car ride that had seemed so sinister at first was very pleasant now that he didn't have to rail against Charles being too dense to sleep with. The man told him about his background (born in Westchester, raised in Keswick, studied at Oxford until he realized all he wanted to study was paranormal phenomena and not English literature and he dropped out) and briefly about his plans for the house: "We'll start collecting data today and then when my team arrives tomorrow we'll start processing it all, see what we've got."

"What then?"

"Well, if we think it's going to be worth our while we'll drop a line to our production manager and he'll pass the word up and they'll slot it for the new season."

"Which means I'll be covering this circus till next year," Erik groaned.

"Did you always want to write for the ADN?" Charles questioned, grinning at him.

Erik tried not to writhe uncomfortably. Anti-social as he was, he wasn't used to giving people much of an idea of himself beyond his surface brusqueness. The perk of only having one-night stands was that few questions beyond "Top or bottom?" ever came up. "Not quite. I had bigger sights in mind when I went to college actually: _Reuters_ or the _New York Times_ or something even more exotic: war journalism, travelling the world on a publication circuit, something glamorous along those lines. My dad still dreams of the day, I'm sure. His son: the next Seymour Hersh. The biggest thing since Stephen Ambrose. You get it."

"So what happened?"

Erik shrugged.

"I don't know." He did know, but it was too awkward to say out loud, especially to someone he now planned on sleeping with.

Charles didn't let it go, though, sidling close to him and jabbing him in a rib, making him flinch slightly.

"What was it?"

"Nothing!"

"No keeping secrets from me, Mr. Lensherr. I've made a life of discovering the secrets of the other side of the veil. Don't think I won't work just as hard to uncover your secrets."

"They're not that interesting, trust me," Erik huffed.

"Good, then you shouldn't mind telling me."

Erik glared at the smaller man but he just smiled back easily, with an eager gleam in his eye that told Erik the more stubbornly he withheld the more determinedly Charles would pursue. It felt flattering, actually, although he knew he shouldn't put any stock into Xavier's rampant curiosity. Erik was just as curious, but that didn't always mean he had a personal interest in what he was investigating, outside of the fun of a new puzzle.

Rolling his eyes, he gave in. "Fine. I interned at the Associated Press in college and, really, it was just never my cup of tea. You may not have been able to tell, but I have a very wrathful personality, and writing about the awful things that happen in this world, in depth and unflinchingly, makes me want to turn to a life of vigilante-ism. As a full-time job I'd probably last six months before I had to take to the open road blotting out where this mean world casts its cold eye."

"What is that? I've heard that before," Charles mused, sitting back, appeased.

"It's a saying, I think. My mother used to say it, when something really awful happened: murder, rape, whatever. 'Where does this mean world cast its cold eye?'"

"I don't suppose there's a lot of that in Avalon. I mean, it seems a very gentle town." Charles grazed his fingertips over the window as he spoke, over the passing bucolic scene: rolling farms and sun-lit trees. Erik just looked at his small fingers silhouetted against the pane and imagined running his own sharp fingertips over them. And he could, he smiled to himself. Charles was no longer off-limits, and if, at day'd end, the Brit invited him back to the hotel room, he thought he'd take him up on it. In the meantime, he made mental note of everything he was going to do to the man.

"Maybe not gentle. Mostly harmless, let's say. And I know it's cowardly, hiding away here, writing about bake sales and ghost hunters, but the alternative is to be pitiless journalist by day and Batman by night, and I'm not a billionaire, so that would be difficult for me."

Charles grinned at him. "You're going to make an interesting ghost one day. I'm not sure I want to be around to witness it," he teased.


	7. Chapter 6

The Gone-Away House was smaller, more sedate than Erik remembered from pictures and imagined based on the amalgamated information from his old school friends who had been dared to look upon its terror. There was a long gravel driveway that shifted to a stop parallel with the front of the house, and a dirt path that ran from the gravel up to the front steps. A wide porch protected the shaded front of the house, with a swing bench hanging sideways on the far right. In peeling gray and white, the place didn't look any more haunted than half a dozen other rundown farm-houses in Avalon, and Erik found himself quietly disappointed.

"How are we going to get across?" Charles questioned, coming around to his side of the car. Erik simply went to his trunk and got out his rubber boots. Charles looked on jealously, bag slung over one shoulder. Damn but the man looked good in a suit.

"You walk across and toss the boots back to me," the Brit suggested, motioning the forty feet or so to the front door.

"You're crazy! What if they don't make it? Who's going to wade out after them?"

"Well I'm not _swimming_ across."

"I'll carry you," Erik suggested. Charles actually _scowled_ at him.

"No thanks, I'll walk around."

But Erik didn't see how that was going to work: the yard was hemmed in on the left by Ash Creek and on the right by enough shrubs and brambles that it would take the rest of the day to hack a trail through it.

"Okay, _I'll _go investigate the house and you can sit in the car until the lake evaporates. How does that sound?" Erik asked, chucking his own shoes into the trunk and putting on the rubber ones, grunting under the weight of Charles' duffel bag.

"I'll go investigate, you drive back to town and buy yourself another pair of Wellies."

Erik squinted at the man through the heavy sunlight.

"Is this like a Napoleon complex?" he asked. "There's nothing embarrassing about being tiny enough for a real man to carry you."

"I'm five-seven, you bitch!"

"We doing this or what?"

Charles sulked prettily, but folded.

"Fine, but I'm going piggyback. Strap that to your chest and I'll carry this bag."

Erik shook his head. "It's slick. I want a hand free in case I have to catch myself. It'd better be fireman's carry."

It was another few minutes convincing Charles, but he won in the end by threatening to tell him all about the House in a voice too loud to block out, thus biasing the little scientist against his will.

"If Mrs. Hudson sees this I'm going to murder her and blame it on the house," the Brit threatened angrily as Erik put the duffel bag and his own satchel over his shoulder. Next up, sexy ghost hunter.

Erik just smirked in the face of his quaint threats and bent down, slipping a shoulder into Charles' hip and wrapping an arm around his solid thigh, taut and muscular and alluring.

Muttering about the indignity of the situation, Charles leaned across his shoulders, allowing Erik to catch his wrist, and he stood fluidly, hoisting the man up.

Charles' wrist was thinner than he was expecting; he could catch the full circle of it and still clutch the fabric of his knee, holding them together like two ends of a scarf in his fist. The heat of the man's body across the breadth of his shoulders, the inside of the man's thigh pressed into his chest, was dizzying for a moment and Erik forced himself to focus on his steps, his free hand gripping the man behind the knee, slacks just as silky soft as he was expecting. Once he was recovered though, he went ahead and got cheeky, sliding his hand up the back of Charles' thigh, thrilled at the feel of the man's abs tightening against his shoulders as he hitched his breath.

"You perv," the Brit complained, a little breathless. "You're the most sexual-harassing of all firemen."

"I guess why they never let me on the squad," Erik sighed sadly.

"Walk. Faster," Charles demanded through grit teeth. Erik ignored him, keeping his steps careful and steady. It really was slick here, the yard mostly mud and slimy grass, and while Charles would forgive him for groping him he didn't think he'd get equal absolution for dropping him in the mud.

Safely at the wooden stairs of the house, Erik twisted, setting the man on his feet but accepting one last caress as he let loose of his thigh. Charles folded his arms over his chest and glared at him with cool blue eyes, face flushed with anger or embarrassment or both. Erik wondered how far down that coloring went.

"If I read about this in your paper I'm running straight to the _Sentinel_ and telling them how you forced yourself on me. And how small your cock was. Understood?"

"They'd never believe you. My cock is a legend in this town. We're thinking of having a statue made."

"To scale in the matchstick museum?" Charles mocked.

"Are you going to flirt with me all day or are you going to show me some ghosts? C'mon-get moving."

"Look," Charles demanded, motioning to the door of the House, a plain white affair with dusty curtains in the four-square window. There was a sticky note attached to a pane.

_Sorry. -Mrs. H,_ it said. That was it.

"Sorry for what?" Erik wondered aloud, shucking his boots off on the patio and continuing on in his thin trouser socks.

"The key is in the lock," Charles pointed out. Erik looked, confused. Sure enough a single bit of metal was sticking out from the door knob. "I guess she's not coming."

"You mean staying," Erik corrected, because there caretaker had obviously been there not long ago. They were only supposed to meet her at eleven, after all, or that's what Charles had claimed.

The Brit checked his watch and said in a huff, "That's a bit rude! We're only twenty minutes late. You'd think she could give us some leeway." Especially since ten minutes of that had probably been spent traversing the front yard.

"Are you sure you got the time right?" Erik questioned. Charles didn't even dignify that with a response, turning the key into the lock and shoving through the stiff door. Erik followed more hesitantly.

There _better _not be an afterlife because if there was then his mother was going to kill him when he got there.

"May I have my bag please?" Charles requested, and Erik handed the heavy bag over gladly.

"I'm going to set up my equipment. Will you make yourself useful and check to make sure there aren't any windows open? I don't want to get any false readings due to a draft. Or did you want to come with me to set up?"

"What does setting up entail?"

Charles squatted down and disemboweled the rugged duffel bag, excising a thick black square of plastic with a digital screen. "I stick these in various places and they record the temperature and electronic anomalies."

"Why electronic?"

"There's a link with electro-magnetic surges coinciding with supernatural presences. We're not sure if it indicates an interruption like with infrasound or if the energy signatures are produced by the ghosts themselves as of yet, but our research is working on that question. Some people think that complex electromagnetic field shifts at low level can even cause full-out hallucinations, as if things weren't complicated enough already."

"You're going to walk around sticking things to walls, is what you're telling me?" He took the man's pout as a 'yes' and continued, "Thanks but I think I'll pass. Call me when you start pulling out the _interesting _ghost-hunting techniques, like Ouija boards or exorcisms. In the meantime I'll be shutting windows."

"I told you, I'm not concerned with chatting up ghosts, only with eliciting results. Ouija boards are not scientifically verifiable."

"Please tell me you're not this esoteric in bed."

Charles glared at him, but Erik thought he detected a hint of amusement there still.

"Get to work, you louse. And close the doors behind you; I like to have everything shut so I can keep track of anything getting opened."

"Ghosts open doors? Can't they just...you know...walk through them?"

"Maybe it makes them feel more normal to do it the old-fashioned way?" Charles suggested, and took his bags up the stairs on their right.


	8. Chapter 7

The Gone-Away House looked a lot like his grandma's house, now that he saw it.

Well, they had their similarities. The dark, dusty floral print couches, the ancient TV complete with rabbit ear antennae, the bookcase boasting more knicknacks than books... Erik set his satchel on a dusty end-table and rolled his sleeves up in order to more cleanly battle his way past discolored lace curtain to check windows carefully for drafts. Half the coldspots in the world could be attributed to bad insulation, he figured. Charles wasn't going to get away with saying otherwise.

The living room was attached directly to the dining room at the back of the house, which for some reason had a staircase running through it coming down along the wall to empty into the living room. To the right of that mess was the kitchen, spacious on an L set up with a marble island in the center. Erik couldn't help but be a little jealous. He loved to cook and with this kind of kitchen he could _really _get some work done. There were two doors facing the kitchen, one going to a small bathroom and the other to a walk-in pantry that Erik forged designs on. A third door ran adjacent, which led to a mudroom and then outside.

Erik made sure all the doors were securely shut and double-checked the windows before heading upstairs via the curiously placed second staircase.

" Erik? Is that you?" Charles's voice rang out as the stairs squeaked beneath his weight.

"I think it's the ghost!" he called back.

"Sounds like one fat ghost," Charles replied.

"I think you mean one tall, manly ghost."

"I think I would know if that's what I meant..."

At the top of the stairs was an actual library, which took Erik aback a step. How the fuck many farm-houses had a library? He was beginning to think somewhere in the history of the town someone had simply miswritten "weird as fuck" as "haunted" and gossip had started up from there on.

"Going downstairs!" Charles informed him. He must be using the other staircase.

Erik secured the three windows in the library. Two shared a darling window-seat, looking out onto the stream. This house would actually be really nice if you updated a few things, gave it a better driveway, draining system...Too bad most of the people in town were terrified of it and in turn terrified any newcomers who attempted to live in it. Maybe if the city didn't want it any more, someday Erik could buy it. Another perk about not believing in ghosts was it gave you rock-bottom prices on buying ghost houses.

The Lovegoods were the last family he had known to live there. He'd been five when they moved in but their daughter was years older than him and so he'd never forged an interest in them beyond 1) his mom forbidding him and his dad from having anything to do with them, and 2) the scary stories his friends told him about them. For the first time in his adult life he found himself wondering about them. Namely, about how much they'd paid for the place.

There was a small black box stuck to the end of the hallway and Erik checked the window there before moving along. The hall was mirrored on either end by matching windows, and over the downward stairwell was a linen closet. No windows.

He opened the door across from the staircase: a bedroom. The twin bed was made up with stiff linens and a purple bedspread, the frame thick and rustic. There was a lamp in the corner that didn't work, and some thumb tacks in the walls, but that was absolutely all. Next door was even eerier: it was the baby's room.

Erik had heard all about The Baby, but he assumed it was a story steeped in fiction. It seemed it was only garnished with fiction, because here was a nicely lit little room, a ring of giraffes chomping on each other's tails wallpapered in a repetitive circle, bisecting the walls, peeling and moldy in places. Erik shut the door quickly and moved on. He didn't believe in ghosts but that didn't mean there wasn't something inherently awful about a dead baby's nursery.

There was a small office across the hall, with most of the furniture covered with sheets. The windows were old but sturdy. No drafts.

The last room was the master bedroom, also done up. Charles' things were splayed out, a laptop on the hope chest at the foot of the bed, his bags indenting the mattress. The pillows on the bed were large and plush, a frankly adorable quilt spanning the massive bed. Erik considered stealing the gorgeous thing, and then lay down and considered stealing the entire bed, it was so deep and comfortable. Ghosts got the best digs.

He rested there for a few minutes, letting himself realize that his hangover wasn't done with him yet, that, despite how much excitement and grease and coffee had pushed his hangover to the backburner, it was still very much there, just waiting for him to notice it.

Rubbing his eyes and feeling the pain spark behind them at the pressure, he groaned, rather pitiably—it was wasted on the empty room. Not ready to get up, but desiring to distract himself, Erik reached over for Charles' bag, a plain black backpack like Erik had used in middle-school: dutiful, no-nonsense. He yanked unconcernedly at the closest zipper and pulled out a book stuffed within: _Jane Eyre. _

Snorting, Erik was about to crack the broken-in paperback open when he heard a long, drawn-out creaking. Jumping slightly, looking down past his feet to the bathroom, he saw that the light was on, and watched as one of the white lacquered cupboards under the sink creaked open and open until it met its limit and eked to a grudging stop.

With aggravation Erik noted that his heart was jittering rapidly in his chest, making it difficult to breathe. He did not believe in ghosts. So how could he allow his body to undermine him like this?

Angrily, he shoved himself up, tossing his pilfered book away and stalking to the bathroom, dropping down and slamming the cupboard shut again on its pitiful contents of dust and rat poison. With a sad sort of groan it popped open again. The catching mechanism was busted, Erik saw, the knob on the door didn't fit the prongs from the cupboard. Glaring, Erik shoved the door in hard, wedging it in place with the help of so many coats of paint. Entrapped, the door stayed shut with an air of thwarted fun, giving off a palpable sense of petulance. Erik sat back on his heels proudly. He'd have to remember to tell Charles about the faulty door—the man was not playing faulty cupboards off as a haunting.

When he stood up his head swam for a second, his hangover _demanding_ to be noticed now that patience had failed it. Erik had tried coffee, greasy food, and flirting—nothing kept the menace at bay. It was time to resort to pharmaceuticals.

He didn't see Charles but he did see his handiwork: every single drawer and cupboard in the kitchen was wide open. He was apparently dealing with the world's messiest paranormal researcher. Grumbling as much, Erik cleaned up after the man, shoving everything closed again but taking a cup when he found one.

The fridge was completely empty, apart from some condiments and a hunk of moldy cheese. There were a couple of Otter Pops in the freezer but even those had an air of decay about them. Tap water would have to do. Filling his cup up at the sink, he fished some painkillers out of his trouser pocket. Thank heavens for far-sightedness.

He downed the pills in one gulp and nearly threw them right back up as he retched at the taste of the water. It was greasy and acrid against his tongue, like death, like something dead, like something had climbed into his mouth and decayed into messy, desperate finality. He choked, retching into the sink, stomach clenching, struggling to push this poison back out of him.

Throat spasming with nausea, Erik rushed for the bathroom, more hopeful than sure that he wouldn't be losing his lunch. He struggled to scrape the taste from his tongue, dragging it against his teeth, and was horrified when he could feel the layer of grime it left behind, gagging and spitting out a wad of black muck into the chipped porcelain sink. A moment was lost staring in horror before he grappled, shaking for some toilet paper, wiping his mouth out and pulling flake after flake of black filth out of him, retching. Yet under the dim light over the mirror his mouth looked fine, and there was no pain as if he'd drunk something destructively caustic. Whatever was in that water, it had looked perfectly clear, but those flakes hadn't come from him.

Shivering and weak with disgust, but no longer gagging, Erik stumbled to the living room, fumbling through his bag till he got to the mints therein, scraping them over every corner of his mouth, wincing at the dueling tastes, only relaxing when mint won out, falling back into the ancient couch, rubbing his eyes as he listened to the floorboards creaking under Charles upstairs again. How strange that he'd played stairwell-hide-n-seek twice with the man now. He grabbed his notebook from his satchel and distracted himself with work.

He looked over his notes from the interview, blushing. He'd have to come up with some more questions for a real interview. His first one sounded more like the Spanish Inquisition. Emma, along with the rest of the star-struck town, would flay him alive if he really wrote an article about Charles being an ignorant charlatan. Plus, it might hurt his chances with the man. Erik didn't know how long Charles was in town for, but if he could manage to sleep with him every one of those days he was pretty sure he'd jump at the chance.

Finger-combing his hair, Erik sat up and grabbed his phone.

He had never seen Charles' show, had no idea if this sort of dullness was normal or if the ghost houses the man usually investigated were a bit more lively. So far he didn't see how this stuff would make good TV. So he went to the Discovery Channel website and luckily there were a couple of episodes online. He had the option between an abandoned prison in Virginia, a family home in Alabama, and an old mansion in Vermont, chose the mansion because it seemed to approximate the Gone-Away House: old, uninhabited, and quaint. He should be able to get background information, ideas for his article, and a concept of how bored he was going to be that day all at once.

The show was distinctly trashy, which was unfortunate because Charles and his team (a snarky blonde girl who was a little too hands-on with Charles for Erik's taste, a lanky bespectacled dork, a redheaded boy, and a slim black man) seemed to handle the situations with intelligence and transparency. The editors meanwhile added theatrical camera swervings, pitchy screeching, and an ominous audio track, along with more cliffhangers than was socially acceptable. While Charles stumbled through a dark playroom, the camera man alternated between shoving the night-vision camera awkwardly close to his face, focusing in on his wide reflective eyes (which were legitimately eerie), and jiggling the camera around as if trying to catch a sprinting cat in the frame instead of an empty room.

Drama was also added by way of creepy monologues by people who claimed to have seen the ghosts there, interspersed with old-timey photos and cheap reenactments. The black man, Armando, and Charles did most studies, while Hank, the lanky one, dealt with the various data they collected and Sean, the redhead, was apparently kept on the show purely for his habit of shrieking when surprised or the slightest bit nervous. Raven, the token girl, was kept on hand for no purpose whatsoever: all she seemed to do was take pictures and make fun of everyone's squeamishness when the situation got squeamish, not to mention cuddle up to Charles. Erik found he distinctly did not approve of this.

Charles was pretty definitely gay in front of him. Why did he allow himself to be manhandled like that by an obvious female? Erik held out hope that it was a production ploy to build up romance-ratings and tried to stop gritting his teeth anytime the two were in the same room together, which luckily wasn't too often as Charles was beholden to his duties and the blonde girl reveled in shirking them.

While Charles whispered ghost-interview questions into the darkness of the playroom, Darwin was searching for cold spots in the cellar, and Sean was hyperventilating at being left alone in the insane former owner's bedroom. Raven was flirting with a camera-man over a cigarette in the front yard.

There was a loud crash and Sean screamed like a banshee as the camera jerked wildly, and Erik's phone promptly shut itself off.

"What th-" was as far as he got before he saw it—breath stilling in his chest, eyes thrown wide.

Because there-in the black screen of his phone, silhouetted against the light of the dining room window-was the shadow of a man.


	9. Chapter 8

Before he could even think properly he whipped around on the couch, staring, but there was nothing there. The dining room table, four chairs. A window with ugly lace curtains. There was a tall vase on the table-was that what he had seen, distorted by his screen?

He turned and brought the camera back up, trying to recreate the effect.

"Erik?" Charles called to him, but he ignored it, busy. The vase was too short-or it seemed too short. Had he been holding the phone differently? He had had it up off his lap to avoid the glare of the beams of light filtering into living room, and so now it was hard to tell exactly how far up, to the left, to the right, he had been holding it.

Charles called again, though, and Erik always mocked the people in horror movies for not answering when they were called, so he got up and tried to locate the source of the man's voice. Should Erik be shouting back in an upstairs or downstairs position? He went with his first impression and opened the basement door, but couldn't see far: it was dark for one, and, for two, the dangerously steep staircase buckled around a landing.

"Charles?" he said, unsure. It had rather _sounded _like the voice came from down there but there were no lights on, and hadn't he seemed to have heard the man creaking around upstairs earlier? But old houses were full of creaks and it was hard to place from where they originated. He flipped the switch by the door, yet it hardly helped: the light on the landing was extremely dim, like there wasn't enough electricity flowing to it. "_What is it_?" No response. "...Are you down there?"

"Erik?" the man repeated, but it was strange, like it was coming from two places at once. An echo? Was his voice seeping up or down through the _vents _in the house?

"Charles!" he called down, his voice reverberating around as in a cave.

There was a thud from upstairs and Erik pulled back, staring at the ceiling.

"Erik?" again. This time he was sure it was coming from downstairs and was two steps down when he heard footsteps upstairs and turned back, heart thumping.

Charles was skidding down the stairs, annoyed look on his face.

"_What_?" he asked with much exasperation.

"You said my name," Erik pointed out around the tightness of his own throat.

"No, I said _'what_,' like fifteen goddamned times."

"No, _I _said what."

"_You_ were calling my name," Charles argued, and then his face broke into another cheeky smile. "And it won't be the last time tonight, either."

Erik just rolled his eyes, following Charles as the Brit strut into the kitchen. Actually, now that he thought about it, _all _the man's walkings were actually struts. Something to do with the sway of his hips. Erik was going to have to look into this further.

He was thinking too hard about _how _he was going to look into this to notice when Charles grabbed up his cup and refilled it at the sink, only realizing when the man turned to take a sip.

"Wait!" Erik yelped, reaching to snatch the cup from him but it was too late. He jumped back in case Charles didn't have his masculine ability to overcome the bulimic effects of the putrescent water, but Charles didn't even pull a face, just stared at him.

"Um, what?" Charles questioned, licking the water off his lower lip in a way Erik would have been distracted by if he were capable of being distracted away from something so incomprehensible.

"There's...there was...doesn't the water taste...well, awful?"

"A little tinny," Charles shrugged, which boggled the mind. Erik pulled the cup off him and took a sniff before tasting the contents with just the tip of his tongue and then a sip. It was fine.

Scratching his head, he frowned at the cup, holding it up to the light.

Charles was staring at him outright, like he'd been left alone with a total psychopath.

"I must have had a bad cup or...I should have let the water run before I filled it. It tasted disgusting when I had some," he explained. Disgusting was an understatement.

The other man's brow cleared and he smiled at him with a distinctly sultry lilt.

"Want me to clear your palate?" the Brit offered. Erik tried to wither him with a glare but it didn't seem to have any effect. The man only laughed and put the cup in the sink before walking past him. "I've got the stationaries set, so I'm going to do an interview now. I'll record it and then my team will analyze it for EVP when they get here. Is that interesting enough to join me?"

Erik was glad he had watched that kitschy show or else he would have had to ask what an EVP was. "Electronic voice phenomenon? Count me in," he got to cheer instead, basking in Charles' glance of surprised approval.

"Took a jaunt to Google, eh?" the man accused playfully, leading the way up the main staircase. Erik followed, loving the view. Those hips had a definite sway to them. He wanted nothing more than to put his hands out and feel the bones, the sinews and muscles work against his palms. Later, hopefully; unless the man was nothing more than a truly outrageous tease. Erik didn't even want to consider the possibility. This house was confusing enough without him having to deal with blue balls on top of it.

Charles sat on the hope chest at the foot of the bed in the master bedroom, giving Erik the spare chair, and setting up an enviable Zoom H4n portable audio recorder that Erik tried not to glare at since he was still suffering through the outdated H2 model himself.

"I'll test it first," Charles explained, and with the glint in the man's eye Erik figured he'd get something incredibly raunchy. Instead the man hit record and asked, "Mr. Lensherr, how is it being Jewish in a backwater town in the middle of nowhere?"

"It's not necessary for me to answer that for you to test your apparatus, you know," Erik pointed out, but Charles smiled at him, eyes so full and bright, and so he answered anyway. "It's fine, thank you. Are you going to tell me how you knew? Or should I assume you are psychic in addition to deluded?"

Charles chuckled and pressed stop, rewind. "Your breakfast didn't have any bacon or sausage even though the meal comes with it. So I rather assumed. Glad to know I was correct, though. Maybe I should be the investigative journalist?"

"What would the ghosts do without you?" Erik mocked. Charles fidgeted with the recorder but didn't start it yet.

"It can't be easy, though. I mean, to be Jewish and gay in someplace so very…_rural_."

Erik supposed that gave him some insight into Charles' own background.

"I don't know about gay, but I probably couldn't find a more Jewish backwater town. Avalon was settled as a Jewish outpost. It was called New Zion in those days...this was a long, long time ago. Asser Franco and a bunch of other Dutch Jews founded it in 1690. Eventually it grew and merged with a nearby town, Avton, and then by 1883 anti-Semitism in America was running rampant, and they renamed the city to Avalon. A lot of the Jewish families had upped and left by then. Between 1875 and 1883 about half the Jewish population just up and disappeared. Half!"

"You know a lot about this," Charles said, awed. The heavy weight of his admiring glance was about as flattering as his lustful one, and Erik blushed slightly with it.

"Well, I wrote my thesis on it. On the history of Jews in Avalon, I mean. Not just the exodus."

"Where did you go to school?"

"I thought you were supposed to interview the ghost, not me," Erik joked, secretly pleased that the other man was paying so much attention to him. The negative part about limiting himself mostly to one-night stands was that conversations essentially boiled down to "Oh yeah you like that don't you yeah."

Charles snorted a laugh but crossed his legs, setting Erik's heart to stuttering in his chest, and pressed play. His own relaxing British tones caressed their way out of the machine, and Charles stopped it, rewound, pressed record.

He motioned Erik to be silent, and said, "Who are you?"

With an eye on his expensive watch, the man remained quiet for a long time and then said, "What is your name?"

The same long silence, and Erik reached to press stop.

"I don't think your ghost is answering you."

Charles gave him a sedate glare, saying, "If you'd watched a whole episode you'd know this is how we conduct our talks. I ask a question and leave thirty seconds of silence for the entity to generate any EVPs. They're generally outside the human frequency threshold, so when Hank gets here I'll have him analyze the tape with his auditory equipment. Hank's my—"

"I know who Hank is," Erik interrupted, because the man needed to know that he wasn't a complete slacker. He had done _some_ background research (in the last hour). He thought about asking who the grabby blonde woman was, but forbore for fear that he'd sound too interested and ignorant at the same time.

Charles pressed record again. Erik was wishing he had skipped out on this process too. Investigating non-existent entities was exactly as dull as he imagined. Stick things to walls, ask questions to the air, try to figure out how vases managed to look like people in the glare of a cell phone.

Charles spiced it up though. Getting Erik's attention back with an expressively sultry quirk of the brow, he grinned, asked the machine, "Mr or Mrs Ghost? How do you feel about two men fucking in your haunted house?"

Erik was about to snark back about _his_ feelings on the matter when there was a loud crash from the closet and he jerked back in his chair. It tipped dangerously on two legs but Charles grabbed his arm, dragging him back down before sprinting to the closet, Erik barely a step behind.

Throwing the door open, Erik glanced around wildly, but Charles just stepped in and grabbed his detector box from where it had fallen to the floor.

"Let me guess, ghost attack?" Erik joked to hide his anxiety.

"The adhesive must be weak," the Brit mumbled, pressing his finger to the white strip on the back of the machine distractedly, brushing past Erik back to his bag on the bed. Erik found himself looking the closet over once more, though.

Closing the door securely, he followed Charles to the bed where the man was putting a new strip of adhesive on the back of the machine.

"Are you cold?" Charles asked, glancing his way.

"No, are you?"

Charles laughed and nodded to his bare arms. "You have goosebumps."

Erik looked down. Sure enough the gingery hair on his arms was standing on end, the skin pimpled in uncountable hills. He scrubbed the bumps away easily.


	10. Chapter 9

"I'm going to do the audio test now, see if there's any infrasound we should be aware of. You'll have to come with me so we can cut down on disruption." Charles chewed gently on his lower lip as he fixed the old thermo-device and Erik had to remind himself to snark.

"Oh joy," he sighed.

"I'm sorry that it's not all as glamorous as the movies, or even our show. You'll have to somehow make it sound interesting for your article," Charles smiled. Erik liked the way it crinkled around his eyes. "I don't envy you the task." He went and stuck the mechanism back in the closet and then rummaged a high-tech looking box out of his duffel bag. It was a plastic machine, about the size of a shoebox, with a black strap around the sides of it and was positively covered in buttons, switches, dials, outlets, inlets, and LCD screens. Charles put the strap around his neck and plugged in something that looked like a small megaphone.

"How does it work?" Erik asked avidly. The thing lit up at the sound of his voice, the screen jumbling with numbers and a squiggling graph before falling back to baseline when he was quiet again. He pulled his mini-notebook and pen from his back pocket and took vigorous notes.

"Audio enters the capture cord here," Charles explained, pointing to the mini-megaphone. "And the machine basically says what frequency the noise is at and then puts it on this graph so you can see the fluctuations. When I press record it files the audio to memory and we can hook it up to the computer to print." The man fiddled with a bunch of knobs and buttons, muttering, "I'm just changing the frequency threshold so it'll ignore everything above thirty Hz."

"Why?"

"Well, that way if we speak it won't show on the graph and skew the readings. Human voices are generally above thirty Hz."

"What frequency do ghost voices show up at?"

"Ha ha," Charles murmured distractedly. "We're not looking for ghost voices at the moment, Mr. Lensherr. Much like checking the house for drafts that could infiltrate our study, we are now looking for infrasound, which has interesting psychological effects on humans that can give you a false positive."

"I guess we should get started then."

They started their slow trek through the house, going through the entire upstairs, even the attic. Erik didn't mind the attic so much, since it was hard for Charles to climb the ladder with the box heavy on his chest and so Erik got to "help" him.

"If my arse ends up in your hands one more time today you'd better fecking do something with it," Charles growled when he was safe and sound, flipping his hair back. Erik swore that he would, grinning widely at the adorable way Charles had of cursing.

"What frequency does this…infra…stuff show up at?" Erik questioned when Charles continued to frown at the numbers coming up.

"Eighteen is ideal. That is, the majority of people respond the most to that frequency. But anything from ten to nineteen is scientifically relevant," the man responded in a distracted, murmury voice. Erik found that he was just as attractive when he was preoccupied as when he was focused on his seduction. It was a different kind of draw, quiet and smooth.

They moved downstairs, going through every inch of that too, even the mudroom and kitchen cupboards. Erik was surprised when Charles walked right past the basement for the front door and patio.

"Seriously? You're not going to even check the basement? The ghosts are always in the basement!"

"Oh, fuck!" Charles wailed. "I totally forgot the basement!"

"You're joking," Erik scoffed with a roll of the eyes. "You're the worst ghost-hunter ever! The basement is the first place you check!"

"We prefer paranor—"

"Yeah, yeah, alright. C'mon, let's go."

Flicking on the dim light, Erik made sure to keep behind Charles so he wouldn't mess with the readings, which was great because it meant as they got to the door at the bottom of the stairs he got to sneak a hand around the smaller man's body to open the door for him.

Except it didn't open.

The cold metal knob twisted in his grasp, but it hit an impediment and wouldn't unlatch.

"Locked," he shrugged, letting loose, grazing the other man's hip as he slipped by. Charles didn't seem to notice, busy hooking his arm under his audio box to get a free arm, tugging at the knob himself until he was satisfied that Erik could indeed tell the difference between a locked door and a stubborn one.

Slipping the box off him completely and onto the floor, he said with excitement: "There was a ring of keys on the hook by the door! I'll be right back." And he lunged up the stairs.

In the meantime Erik examined the door. With a locksmith for a father it was entirely possible that he might be able to pick the lock...It was too dim to really see clearly, but his unclear view was bolstered with an examining hand to tell him the massive door was metal, or at least mostly metal. It was extremely old, riddled with rust. The feel was cold and crusty, gross. Bits of rust rubbed off on his hand and Erik realized the smell of rust was very similar to the smell of blood. Like breathing through a broken nose. Like a cut in the mouth. A smell so strong it was a taste.

One by one the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and Erik knew for a fact that there was someone standing just behind him.

He tried to take a breath, couldn't, couldn't swallow. He knew it wasn't Charles. Five hours after meeting him he knew the weight of the man's gaze and this was heavier. Colder.

Keeping his movements slow and steady, as he would with a rabid dog, Erik turned, staring hard into the dimness of the steep stairwell. There was nothing. But the weight of the stare didn't abate, nor the belief, the _knowledge_ that someone was there. His eyes could try to convince him all they wanted that the stairwell was empty, but he knew otherwise.

He wanted a way out, a way around, but there was nothing, nothing he could do, no way out. Backing up a step he hit the door automatically, slipping on the audiobox, the barnacles of rust catching at his hair.

A movement—definite movement, the touch, the feel of a graze along the back of his neck and Erik couldn't stand it, he jerked away, towards the presence, but he didn't care—had to get away, had to push his way out.

A cord of tightness round about his throat and he tried to cry out, couldn't. He thrashed hard against the constriction The cord about his neck snapped and he could breathe, could wrack out breath, suck it in, shaking, stuttering. He grappled up the stairs, scrabbling in a sprint, crashing through the door and right into Charles.

"Erik!" the man cried, catching him. There was a cold slide of a snake against the skin of his chest, his stomach, and he _squeaked_, grappling his shirt out of its tuck and pulling out—his necklace. The Star of David necklace his parents had given him at his bar mitzvah.

"It did it!" he accused breathlessly, propping himself up against the wall so he wouldn't fall down. "It pulled my necklace!"

"Erik, what are you talking about?" Charles balked, rubbing his shoulders consolingly. Erik threw him off.

"Where the fuck were you?!" he shouted, shoving the man. "You left me down there by myself!"

"Did something happen?" Charles asked, but he sounded more excited than compassionate. Erik couldn't answer, was too busy trying to breathe, trying to think of what _had_ happened. What had happened? What _was_ that?

Before he could think of an answer Charles was running down the stairs.

"Charles, don't!" he shouted after, was forced to follow when the man didn't listen to him, shoving his necklace in his pocket for safe-keeping.

Charles had a ring of keys in one hand and one of his little black machines in the other, but this one was bigger, had a lit-up red LCD screen and he was running it along the edges of the door.

"What's it doing?" Erik questioned.

"I'm checking for cold spots, for electromagnetic fluctuations, but…" He trailed off, set the electro-temp machine down and picked up the frequency finder and ran that along the hallway, too.

"What does it say?" Erik asked, shaking the man's shoulder like an excitable child.

Charles shook his head. "I need a flashlight."

"I'll get it," Erik insisted. No way was he staying down there again. Maybe if he left Charles alone the man would realize what he was talking about, the thing down there…

He shivered at even the thought, ran up to the kitchen and started rummaging around for a flashlight. Charles didn't call out to him, even when he dillydallied in order to leave time for the man to call out to him. Did that mean there was nothing tormenting him or that he was simply too scared to speak? Erik's heart was still racing…

The man didn't look any worse for wear when he came back, flashlight in hand. He just examined the door from top to bottom, and then tried all the keys on the ring on it. None of them worked. Erik didn't tell him he might be able to pick the lock. He wanted nothing to do with whatever was behind that door.

Disappointed, Charles fingered one of the many old studs sticking out of the rusted door.

"This must be what caught your necklace," he suggested. Erik started to shake his head because that was _not_ what had caught his necklace, but Charles grabbed him by the shoulders, dragging him down and pressing him back against the cold door. He shivered, at that or the feel of Charles' hand caressing the back of his neck, lining it up with the stud, it was hard to tell.

"See?" the Brit said, brushing where the skin of his neck pressed into the metal stud. "Come on, there's nothing down here," Charles sighed sadly, grabbing up his machines and going back up the stairs, noticeably dragging his feet, looking fondly back at the door as if wishing a spirit would manifest right then and there to give him something to go off of. Erik pushed past him to go first. He didn't want the cold basement air at his back. He closed the door firmly behind the brunet, wishing the damned thing had a lock.

"Maybe there's another way in," Charles mused hopefully. "Besides the metal door…"

Erik ignored him; he had more important inquiries.

"What does infra…infra_sound_ feel like?"

Charles set his things down on the coffee table in the living room and sat down heavily on the couch. Erik joined him, ignoring Charles' crossed legs for the first successful time that day.

"It's different for different people. I felt it at a house up in Canada one time. It made me feel nauseous, weak, like my muscles weren't linked up properly. I had to sit down. Anxious—cold sweat, shaking. It was an amazing phenomenon."

Erik shook his head. That wasn't what he had felt. Charles continued. "For other people it can be more like paranoia. Like someone's watching you, like there's an oppressive presence. You feel nervous, in danger. At a certain point, about 17 Hz, it syncs up with the resonance frequency of the human eye and people sometimes see things: shadows, smudges."

"That's it. That's exactly right," Erik nodded avidly, overjoyed, so relieved he was almost weak with it. There _was _a logical explanation for it; he had been right. Somehow his necklace must have gotten out of his shirt, caught on the door. Charles had said as much. The rest of it was simply this infrasound. Erik would do a whole article on it. He was so happy he wasn't going to have to write about being converted to ghosts. This was much better.

But Charles was frowning.

"Well, there was infrasound, technically. But it was at 22 Hz. Nearly audible…" he explained. Erik looked on blankly.

"What does that mean?"

"Well it's possible that this frequency affects you. It's different for everyone, I suppose. It's just that normally it's between 7 and 19 that people respond. But it's possible. It's entirely possible…" The man seemed to get an idea, lit up with it. "We can do an experiment!"

"What kind of experiment?" Erik questioned distastefully. Anything down in that basement was plainly out of the question. Even though it was just infrasound, that didn't mean he wanted to feel it again.

"We'll find another area that has a frequency of 22Hz and see how you react!" Charles cheered, taking up his frequency machine again. Erik frowned. He doubted it'd be much fun to be a labrat, but anything beat going back downstairs.

Erik's legs felt about done in for the day. He stayed on the couch and let Charles run about trying to track down the right frequency, writing down exactly what had happened to him. Actual ghost-hunting might be the scam he'd always imagined, but infrasound was amazing. It certainly explained a lot. Erik really had been petrified with fright. No wonder that people got confused into believing in ghosts—if Erik hadn't been informed about infrasound there was no telling what he would have ended up believing.

"I found one!" Charles cried out finally and Erik slipped his notebook back into his pocket before dragging himself to the study.


	11. Chapter 10

Charles swept a stained old sheet off the desk chair for him to sit at, turning to beam at him.

"22.3," the man cheered. "Same as in the basement. Sit here, close to the wall."

Erik shoved the chair up to the wall that separated the study from the master bathroom and sat down, dreading feeling terrified again, but at least Charles would be there, and at least this time he knew it was all scientifically explicable.

But a couple minutes later and he didn't feel any different: heart pounding with anticipation but otherwise nothing. Nothing like in the stairwell: no imagined presence, no oppressive gaze, no chill down his spine. It was even a struggle not to smile, watching Charles fidgeted eagerly, waiting for him to burst out bawling or something. Certainly nothing like the stairwell.

"Maybe if you're alone," Charles suggested finally. "Sometimes that works better. And in the basement you were already on edge from being in a dark stairwell alone…try to get into that mindset again. Maybe it made you more susceptible to the infrasound than you normally would be."

Erik was a little nervous about being left alone, but he allowed it, nodding.

But try as he might all he felt was bored, not frightened. When Charles came back, _sans _frequency finder but _avec _tape recorder, he told him as much.

"Erik, this is great!" the man raved.

"Why?"

"Don't you see? If you felt a presence and it really wasn't because of infrasound then that means we have a legitimate scenario on our hands! An actual ghost—or entity."

Erik frowned sullenly and snapped, "That's ridiculous. You said so yourself there was nothing down there!"

"Well there's temperature fluctuation…but the basement is already cooler than the rest of the house—maybe the fluctuation is simply getting lost in the ambient temperature."

"But you said it was infrasound—that what I felt was infrasound."

"No I said it _could _be infrasound, and we just proved it wasn't. You felt the presence at 22.3Hz and here you are sitting on 22.3Hz and you don't feel anything! That means whatever you felt has nothing to do with infrasound!"

"We didn't _prove _anything," Erik growled back. "Maybe it's that mental state thing, maybe my mind's just not in the right mode to get affected by infrasound, couldn't that be the case?"

"I'd say your mind would be much more susceptible to infrasound after your first encounter than before it. For Christ's sake, Erik—not twenty minutes ago you were insisting a ghost pilfered your necklace, now you're saying you didn't feel an entity at all!"

"That's not what I'm saying. I felt something, I did. But it wasn't a ghost. It was what you said—infrasound."

Charles shook his head hard with frustration, fiddled with his recorder.

"Just tell me exactly what you experienced, okay?" Charles demanded, pressing record and setting the device down on the end table beside them. "What is your name?"

Erik glared at him but answered. "Erik Lensherr."

"And can you tell me what you saw, Mr Lensherr?"

"I didn't see anything."

Charles pressed stop, stamping his foot with aggravation. "Erik!"

"I didn't!" Erik snarled. "I didn't see anything, I only felt it!"

"Okay, okay," Charles said through his teeth, manhandling the recorder again.

"Can you please tell me what happened to you? From the beginning, please."

For some reason 'the beginning' made him think about his run-in with the bad tap water, but he pushed the thought aside.

"I was following an extremely annoying ghost-hunter down a set of rickety old steps to the basement when we got to a locked door. The complete jerk left me sitting in an empty stairwell alone in the dark claiming that he only needed to get a set of fucking keys, but instead pissed about for an extraordinary amount of time."

"I had to get my electroscope," Charles muttered bitterly, pouting.

Erik tried to focus on the story he was telling, which was hard since he really, really did not want to think about it again, ever. He remembered that it was simply infrasound, nothing to be ashamed of. "The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and it felt like someone was standing behind me."

"Did they touch you? Breathe on you?" Charles interrupted to ask. "How did you know they were there?"

"I didn't feel anything physical. Just like someone was staring at me. A presence, or whatever."

"Did it feel like a person or a thing—more human or animal in nature?"

That gave Erik pause. "It felt…like a rabid dog. Or…a person, definitely a person. Part person and part animal I guess."

Charles frowned and Erik realized that hadn't been very clear, but he didn't know what to amend it to.

"Was the presence more male or female in nature?"

Erik tried to remember. "Male, I guess. I don't know."

"Then what happened?"

It was all so hazy now; it took Erik a second to think of it. "I…I turned to look, but there was nothing there. I backed up against the door and the thing pulled…I mean…my necklace caught, on a stud. I jerked away and the necklace choked me," Was that right? It had felt more like the thing had pulled his necklace tight, choking him, and then he had pulled away. He couldn't remember it properly now. "I ran up the stairs and my necklace broke," or had the necklace broken and then he run up the stairs? "That's it."

Charles nodded eagerly, caught up the tape recorder to speak closer to it. "The subject experienced these phenomenon at 15.6 degrees Celsius, the EMF meter shows an electromagnetic reading well within average range for the area (consistent and non-complex), and the frequency for the spot in question is 22.3Hz: low but technically within average range. I'll re-examine the area with the more sensitive MADS sensor to be on the safe side. The subject showed no response to a second site of 22.3Hz."

"What's a MADS sensor?" Erik questioned once the machine was done recording.

"It's a more sensitive version of the electro-magnetic field meter. They measure both AC and DC components of the magnetic field and can do so 250 times a second, in 3 orthogonal directions simultaneously. It covers a frequency range from DC – 125Hz and an amplitude range of + / - 1000mG."

"Can boredom kill? Should I stand so close to you when you're being this boring?"

"Kindly shut yourself up. _In short_, some people believe that, just like infrasound induces experiences, certain magnetic fields, or fluctuations thereof, can create the same sorts of false-positives."

"So there is still a chance," Erik clung hopefully. "Even if it wasn't infrasound I felt—it could be this magnetic field thing."

Charles eyed him glaringly. "So now you'll concede that it might not have been infrasound?"

"Only if I have magnetic fields to fall back on," he grinned.

The MADS sensor took the both of them to haul, mainly because each sensor, one for AC and one for DC, were individually hooked up to their own laptop. It told them that the stairwell had a standard magnetic field that fluctuated slightly closer to the door. Erik was hoping it would augment his argument, that electromagnetic disparities coupled with a 22.3Hz frequency was what was causing his anxiety. Instead Charles insisted everything was well within average range and that anything Erik had felt was purely paranormal.

They fought about it.

Erik accused Charles of downplaying the interference of the magnetic fields; Charles accused Erik of overestimating the importance of the infrasound and magnetism.

"You don't know anything about this stuff! You didn't even _know_ about infrasound until this morning!" Charles argued.

"Well you don't know anything about anything ever!" Erik retorted, not his best debate point.

"You're an idiot!" Charles shouted back, storming upstairs simply to get away from him.

"Well you're a fraud!" Erik yelled, simply to hurt him.

Charles turned on him immediately, and Erik felt that oppressive presence again, but this time the source was obvious: it was definitely coming from the diminutive brunet stabbing a finger into his chest.

"Don't you fucking dare! Don't you libel my work just because you can't admit to yourself that what you felt was real!"

Then the man whirled and stomped his way back upstairs, slamming a door when he got there.

Erik complained to himself vaguely and collapsed weakly on the couch again to go over his notes and add to them the fact that Xavier was maddening and an asshole and just a little bit scary when he was pissed.

Once he wrote out all his frustrations, he thought again about what had happened. Charles had said himself that different fluctuations affected people in different ways. Why couldn't he just admit that while his findings might be within the realm of normality, for Erik and whoever else had accused this house of being haunted through the years, these so-called normal levels induced perceptions that were very _not_ normal? Why was that so hard to admit? That was a much better belief than the paranormal.

It was easy to see now that any of Charles' success on the show had been brought about by normal parameters affecting certain people in non-normal ways and Charles simply chocking that up to the paranormal, just because his precious data claimed 'average'.

The man was just impossible, but then again why should he _want_ to accept Erik's idea when he got paid so much money to believe otherwise?

A wave of guilt hit him for thinking something so mercenary about Charles of all people, who seemed so genuine and passionate. And hot—shouldn't forget hot.

That put him in a conundrum, though. He still very much wanted to sleep with the brunet but after that fight he got the feeling Charles would not be feeling likewise for quite a while. At least not without some serious apologizing and sucking up. Or sucking other things, maybe. Erik could get behind _that_. Somehow he didn't think Charles would could that as a make-up. There was a chance though, which was something he couldn't say for most people. Did he want to make up though? Why couldn't he just sleep with Charles without apologizing? Societal courtesies were no fair.

To distract himself from his situation, he tracked down the remote-control and turned on the TV. But there was no cable, which made sense. The place didn't even have a phone, why would it have cable? Still, he managed to pick up a fuzzy image of Channel 4 and watched a rerun of Maury, keeping it on mute since all he could hear was static anyway. The image was pitchy, fuzzing out between cocky slobs being informed they were or were not the father, and pure white noise, sometimes picking up on some monotonous image from another channel: it looked like a series of wells, deep circles in the ground. It was hard to make out.

In the end it hurt his eyes too much to keep up with. He turned it off again, rubbing the ache from his temples. He didn't have any more ibuprofen and his headache was still all too present.

It took him longer than it should have to notice the whispering.


	12. Chapter 11

At first his mind played it off as background noise: people talking outside, Charles on his cell upstairs. Only when his brain had eliminated these possibilities did the organ bring the noise to his conscious attention.

He turned his head, side to side, working out the direction: the corner, by the TV. The vent: the wrought iron lattice work on the floor that covered the duct that led down, probably to the basement. He eased closer to it, kneeling and bending low to listen. He was glad Charles wasn't around to find him in this position: he already had his heart set on topping that luxurious British ass and he refused to be thwarted.

It was the wind, of course, or else amalgamated noises from around the house, from Charles upstairs or a million other things. Amazing though, that his brain could label random noises as whispers. A recording of the quirky phenomenon should definitely appease Charles. Even if the man was an aggravating arguer, that didn't mean Erik had at all ruled out the idea of sleeping with him.

Erik grabbed his recorder from his satchel, dropped to the floor by the vent and started recording, propping himself up on his elbows over the vent and listening hard. Damn but it really sounded like people. He wondered if it could be: maybe there _was _another way into the basement and someone was in there—several someones it sounded like. Maybe Charles had been right about there being another way in.

He tried to make out what the people were saying, or even how many people there might be. But he still couldn't even tell if he was hearing actual people or just the natural noise. All the voices, if that's what they were, seemed to blend together until it sounded like little more than a stiff breeze through dead leaves.

Frowning, he turned the recorder off and sat up.

"Erik," said a reedy voice.

From the grate. Close-not from the basement at all but as if someone were speaking with their lips pressed up to the metal. But there was nothing-there was _nothing_.

He was too shocked, too terrified to respond, frozen in place with his knees just brushing the border of the vent-too close, too close to that voice and whatever that voice was attached to.

"Erik, Erik, _Erik, Erik, __**Erik**_," the vent hissed, a dozen different voices spitting his name—his _name_.

With a weak cry he fell back, scrambling to get away. He shoved himself finally up to his feet, turned to run, to sprint to Charles along the main staircase, but stopped dead in his tracks.

The basement door was open.

He had _shut _the basement door.

He was just considering bolting past to get to the staircase regardless, when the door creaked open another inch, right in front of him.

He didn't bother sticking around to see how much further it opened, he just hurdled over the couch and clambered up the back staircase, sprinting and falling, scrabbling on all fours for a second before he could get his feet back under him.

Charles glared at him when he burst into the library, jacket gone, then turned without a word and stalked back into the main bedroom. His hips weren't swaying now, but looked about bolted in place, so that his steps were stiff and tight.

Erik followed close behind, taking deep, calming breaths. The tape recorder was still clutched in his hand.

"Can," he tried to say but it was a croak of speech, impossible to understand. Charles sat down on the floor with a laptop, his shoulders taut, as Erik cleared his throat and tried again. "Can infrasound—magnetic fields—can that stuff make you hear things?"

Charles' face went red up to the tips of his ears, and he glared at his computer screen wrathfully.

"Oh yes!" he sneered. "It makes you hear things, it makes you act like a complete fecking arse, it makes you an arrogant sonofabitch. Pretty much anything you don't want to deal with, just put it off on infrasound; why not!"

Erik shook his head, trying to get his thinking processes back on line. It didn't work.

He collapsed down next to Charles, too close for people who were technically fighting. But he didn't want to fight, he wanted help.

"Just answer me: can it?"

"Why, are you hearing things now?" the man didn't ask it nicely, didn't even ask it with much interest, as if he were only speaking because he had developed a way of fashioning his words into daggers and wanted the opportunity to hurt him.

"I don't...I don't..." Erik murmured, confused by what had happened and shocked by what _was _happening, by having the seemingly kind man be _mean _to him.

"Even if infrasound can't make you hear things, why not just play it off as an overactive imagination? That's an easy excuse and you don't even need to warp scientific facts for your own cowardly desires. Are you a naturally imaginative person? Hysterical?"

Erik tried to think if he was, if there was a history of hysterics in his family he could have inherited without noticing, but then he realized that Charles was just being a dick, wasn't actually trying to help him.

The audacity of it chilled him, hardening to something affronted and frozen in his chest, and he vowed then and there to use this hardness to cut himself away from the man. Whatever tendrils of affection or lust the man may have managed to worm a way into Erik, he would slice away.

Charles, intuitive man that he was, seemed to pick up on this and let his ire fall from him like an ill-fitting coat.

"Look, I'm sorry," he muttered bitterly. "I am. I'm sorry."

Erik ignored him angrily. It wasn't like he had these kinds of existential crises often. When he did have them he would like some god-damned sympathy if that wasn't too much to ask.

"Feck," Charles hissed under his breath, frustrated. "Okay, it annoys the hell out of me to say this, but I actually agree that the place isn't haunted. All right? Are you happy now? Will you look at me?"

Erik did look at him, but only out of shock. "But you said-"

"I know what I said," Charles grumbled. "Honestly, it aggravated me more that you were, after six hours, feigning the kind of scientific aptitude it took me years of professionalism and research to attain, more than that I actually disagreed with you."

Erik tried to take this in, but his mind didn't want to. It felt like betrayal, to have the man suddenly keen on playing off his experience rather than playing into it, even though the man didn't even know he'd had an experience, if that was what he had had, which he certainly didn't know for sure yet was what he had even had and he shouldn't jump to conclusions just because it was the creepiest thing to have happened to him and maybe like the basement there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for a fucking vent to whisper his fucking name.

"So you see," sighed Charles, oblivious to Erik's mind fraying at the seams. "I'm not the hard-nosed scientist I like to pretend. I'm just as petty and ignoble as the rest of them. Put that in your article why don't you."

Shaking his head, Erik tried to understand.

"But why? Why do you agree with me?" _Why do you agree with what I used to think..._

"My options are pretty slim. Either there's a ghost that only likes to scare you in stairwells but somehow manages not to manifest itself in any way that can be construed as data or you're an anomaly and respond to 22.3Hz under duress. I left you alone in a dark stairwell-it's a bit scarier than being left in a sunlit study."

Well, that's what the man thought now. It was time to see how he reacted now that Erik did have his adored hard data.

"I want you to listen to this," he said, pressing the recorder into Charles' hand. The man's free hand pressed over his, warm and sure.

"Erik, you're freezing," the brunet pointed out, surprised.

"Please, just listen. Just rewind it a little and listen," Erik begged.

Charles pulled their hands loose and did so.

It came out sounding fainter on the machine, more garbled, and it had been plenty garbled to begin with.

"Is it…static? Wind?" the man questioned.

"It's from the vent. To the basement," Erik explained, staring Charles meaningfully in the eye. Charles didn't avoid his gaze, but he didn't play into it either. He didn't look convinced, no matter the seriousness of Erik's glance.

"I'll have Hank analyze it when he gets here tomorrow," he appeased. But somewhere behind those sunny blue eyes, gears were turning, curiosity gripping him, the scent of a secret to souse out. "What do you think it is?"

Erik knew what he thought it wasn't: static, wind. But what did that leave him with? His mind blazoned an answer, but it wasn't the one he wanted, and he worked around it.

"Could there be someone down there? Could there be another way in?" he murmured. Charles looked him gently in the eye, relaxing against his anxiety, hand pressed over his—not seductively but sweetly, like a friend rather than a conquering impresario.

"I think we'd better find out."


	13. Chapter 12

Erik wasn't out of shape. He jogged. He did kickboxing with Mark once a week. There was no reason for him to be panting like a fat kid in gym class from just trying to get through bramble.

"Did you find anything?" Charles shouted from the front porch, leaning over the bannister to watch his progress.

"I've gotten ten fucking feet—can you give it a break?"

"Hey, I told you to let me do it! Now you can bloody well tolerate," Charles laughed back.

Erik just sighed. It was true that the brunet had wanted to examine the perimeter himself, souse out a way in. But Erik had grumbled for his right to get away and finally won. It was bad enough being in that house at all. He knew better than to think he could sit in there alone, and they only had the one pair of muck boots. He'd offered to carry Charles around like a packhorse, but Charles was even more disgusted with the suggestion than he was and had only glared him down carefully.

So he'd won the right to fight shrubs, slick mud, and blackberry tendrils. Yippee. At least nothing out here was hissing his name, or tricking him into thinking something was hissing his name. Small gains—he'd take what he could get.

With one hand he grabbed a bush, snapping some tall branches so he could get through, but that only got him through another couple feet before a blackberry bramble was shoving itself straight up against the wall of the house, climbing up, an impediment that no amount of keeping to the house-line could outmaneuver. He stopped to catch his breath, hands on his hips, shaking sweat from his eyes.

"What is it now?"

"Would you shut up before I leave your ass here? I could be at home calling in sick right now."

Charles smiled at him cheekily, shading his eyes from the bright sunlight.

"Save it for tomorrow. I'm going to make sure you need it."

"I'm going to hold you to that," Erik grinned breathlessly back, pointing at him as domineeringly as possible.

"You can try."

Chuckling, Erik turned back to task, stomping down all the spikes he could and stumbling over them, cursing when he got scraped. It was difficult to see through the gaps in the bramble, but he tried, rubbing aches out of his cut up calves.

"Find me something I can use and I promise to kiss it and make it better."

"Don't you have something you could do inside to stop bothering me?"

"Sorry, I have to save my lube for later."

But when Erik turned around to gape, the man was already off laughing wickedly to himself. At last Erik was free to be as cursory as possible. He couldn't say he'd mind finding an extra door sitting out here innocuously enough—some kids fooling around, something to explain what he'd heard, what he'd thought he'd heard. But at the same time he didn't want to go into the basement, and he knew that's what would happen if he did find a way in. There's no way Charles would find a way in and not use it. Be it door, window, vent, Charles was going to utilize even the most difficult way in. So in that way Erik very much did not want to find a way in. Any way in.

He fought his way past the remaining shrubs and tripping vines, mostly ignoring the house now. The backyard was weed-choked but had at least remained mostly clear of the encroaching forest, unlike the side of the house. It was quiet back here, just the gurgling of the creek, and that was it. He paused long enough to wipe his face on his shirt sleeve and then fix his hair, but that was as much time as he was allowed as the mud door opened and Charles stood in full glowering glory.

"For someone who doesn't want me to yell at him, you certainly are asking for it. Take those boots off—I'll do it myself."

"Hey, they're my fucking boots. You should have come prepared. Now, if you want me to carry you, that's something we could come to an agreement on. Otherwise…"

Charles glared at him, icy now. "I'll be inside."

Erik grinned, waved goodbye.

He watched the wall near the grass, looking for windows, vents. He could tell with a glance that there was no door out here, no easy access. Rounding to the creek side of the house, he checked there as well. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Sighing with either disgust or relief, he wasn't sure which it was or which it should be, he went to the creek, standing on the stone wall and allowing himself to be mellowed by the cool soft sound of its burbling.

But the house couldn't let him have that.

_Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap._

The noise was small but insidious, burrowing into his brain even over the gurgling of the brook, a sickening, metal-on-metal. The noise was monotonous, not hysterical, not frightened, but steady, waiting for Erik's notice, knowing it would get it. And it was right.

For a moment he held out, staring at the goosebumps rising on his arm, at the sun's reflection on the water. Then he turned around, heart thundering in his ears still not loud enough to drown it out.

Looking up at the house, he could see the little windows leading to the library, the cute one with the window seat, the one he'd been so thrilled, so envious about earlier. It left him disgusted now. Nauseous that such an evil house could try to trick him into liking it by way of an adorable library, like a murderer with a nice smile. There was the dining room window by the stairs, the curtains of the living room, the wide porch. The short stretch of grass from here to there, and the _tap tap tap _hidden there.

Between the scrabby tufts of grass and the spiked weeds, some rusted piece of metal burned in the sun. Erik glared at it, sidling a bare inch closer. The metal appeared to be a grate, like a wrought iron version of the one inside, which was what decided it for him.

Without waiting for creepy voices or anything worse, Erik stepped around it and stomped back to the front porch without bothering to continue his search.

Charles jumped up from the stoop immediately, writhing excitedly on the very last step.

"Well?" he crowed. "Did you find anything?"

"Nope," Erik responded with a shrug. "Not a thing."

"What!" the man groaned, melting from his standard posture with his dismay. He straightened up immediately with ire, stomping one foot. It was so petulantly childish that Erik had to smile, going up the steps and ruffling Charles' hair fondly as he did so. The man ducked under his grasp, pushing his hand away. "Mrs. Hudson has got to have a key to that damned door."

"If she did, wouldn't she have left it? She left all the other keys."

"…There must be a way in, there simply must! Are you sure you didn't see anything out there? Not even a vent? You're skinny enough to fit through a vent, aren't you?"

Erik collapsed, shrugging, onto the swing bench, pushing himself by one foot relaxingly.

"Nope, nothing."

Charles threw himself down next to him, shoving the seat back until it banged against the bannister, grabbing Erik's arm like an overeager puppy with a new toy.

"Do you think the historical society would let me take the door off? I could just take it off the hinges. I could put it back on as soon as we were done. It wouldn't infringe upon the integrity of the house. That thing's a health hazard anyway! It's a total tetanus trap! You're lucky it caught your necklace and not your neck or we could be in the hospital right now!"

Erik frowned dreamily. He hated hospitals and doctors and everything else involved in those death labs, but he wondered if he wouldn't prefer it to this. At least he'd never experienced infrasound or whatever magnetic shit there. Even though his mom had died in the hospital, no vent had ever hissed his name there at least.

He shook his head, trying to rid his mind. It had just sounded like his name. He was imagining things—infrasound, electromagnetic fluctuations, whatever—vents did not call names, overactive imagination, hysteria, that's all it could be. That's all he'd let it be.

"Erik, Erik are you listening?"

He leaned his head back against the bench, gazing up at the handsome man.

"No."

Charles glared but smiled back him. The look was fond, practically affectionate, and Erik thought that maybe this was better than being in the hospital, just _possibly_. Whatever madness this house evoked in him, at least it had given him this in recompense.

"Would you be more attentive if I were talking about…lunch?"

"It's gotta be way past lunch time."

"Er…linner?"

"Yum, linner, my favorite fake meal. What's on the menu?"

"What are you feelings towards pizza?"

"I approve of pizza," Erik nodded, grabbing his phone.

He had forgotten about earlier, about the fact that his phone was not working, only remembering it when he was hit by a wave of surprise as the phone went straight to the home screen with no problems.

"What the…" he mumbled, but was interrupted as his phone lit up with alerts for a slew of missed calls, including Emma and, weirdly enough, his father, who _never_ called, especially at peak rates. Living in Canada with his new wife, it was technically international prices and that galled Papa Lensherr's frugality. Email was cheaper.

Shaking his head with confusion, he pushed the thoughts aside and looked for his contacts. There were plenty of so-called pizza places in Avalon-it was practically the town's official food—but there was only _one_ pizza place that was appropriately amazing and also delivered.

"You…have a pizza place in your contacts?" Charles questioned, reading over his shoulder, close enough for Erik to feel his warmth even in the heat of the day.

"I'm a bachelor! This is standard bachelor fare!" he defended.

"Oh, thank god!" the man laughed, collapsing against his shoulder, breath condensing under his collar. "I mean, I was definitely going to sleep with you regardless, but I think wouldn't have felt the slightest bit guilty had I helped you to cheat on someone."

Erik blushed, hot-throated and accidentally started fidgeting.

"And…um…um, you? Any…cheating, or…well?"

"Articulate as ever, darling. What's your profession again? Something to do with the English language, isn't it? But don't worry. No boyfriend around to beat you up for touching me," Charles teased, hair flopping into his eyes.

Erik smiled back, caressing his hand over the inside of Charles' knee, feeling the muscles tighten under his palm.

"I was hoping to do a bit more than touch."

"So was I," the brunet growled back at him, then grabbed his phone and pushed it at his face. "Starting with pizza."

"Large, meat supreme. Lots of soda. See if they have dessert pizza! Don't forget the garlic bread!" Charles cheered, jumping up and bounding to the front door.

"My god, are you trying to disgust me into not sleeping with you?"

"See if they'll pick us up some alcohol. I'm going to need to be very drunk to ignore your rudeness enough to sleep with you."


	14. Chapter 13

Charles had to finish his work in the house, taking pictures for "photographic paranormal phenomena" by which he apparently meant "ghost candids". The brunet asked if he wanted to help, and did it with that glinting, mischievous gleam to his eye, but still Erik turned him down. He was completely over this house. He couldn't wait till Charles was finished. Whatever that glinting eye was promising now, Erik was hopeful he could get it to be just as promising at his house that night. And he _did_ have phone calls to make, now that his phone was working.

Although Emma had called him three times, he dialed his dad's number first. It wasn't weird for Emma to call him, but his dad almost never called—not during the day, not on a weekday, when rates were highest. He hoped nothing had happened. Emma would murder him if he tried to run up to Canada at a time like this.

Jakob picked up on the second ring, not making Erik feel any reassured what with the anxious way his father said his name.

"Erik? _Erik?"_

"Dad? What's wrong? Has something happened?" he responded just as nervously. He did not much want to be an orphan and hoped that was not what his father had called to tell him-that he was in an accident, that he had only minutes to live or something...

"Nothing, nothing, son!" Jakob exclaimed. "I just couldn't get a hold of you. You worried me."

Erik sighed, leaning his head back on the swing bench, letting relief flood through him, making him realize how anxious he really had been.

"My phone's on the fritz. Why'd you call? I thought something had happened."

"No, nothing. I was just worried about you. Are you alright?"

Erik blushed, glancing at the house. His mother was always the one that had threatened bodily harm about stepping a foot into even the driveway of the Gone-Away House, but that didn't mean his father would be any happier to find him there.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he sort of lied. "Just working. Emma's got me on a field assignment."

"That's good. You like field assignments," his father said blankly. Neither one of them was good talking on the phone together. They maneuvered much better face-to-face or via email, when they could gauge reactions or spend time planning a response, respectively. Erik figured it was his father's fault. He never had problems with phone conversations with anyone else.

"How's Liz?" he questioned, scrounging to fill the silence.

"Fine," Jakob answered, thankful for a venue of conversation. "Did you want to talk to her?"

Erik winced. "No, thanks." He liked Liz fine from afar, but the truth of the matter was his father had remarried when he was 19: he'd never really had a use for Elizabeth and for all that she seemed a nice enough woman, he had never warmed to her as part of his actual family. She had an older son from a previous marriage and Erik felt the same towards him: cool guy, about as much a part of his family as the corner-store druggist. For him, his family would always be him, Jakob and Edie. There was no room in that world-view for additions, no matter how pleasant the applicants.

"Jimmy's in town," Jakob informed him. Speak of the devil.

"Between jobs?" he inquired, grinning with much tooth while he picked at the gray paint peeling from the swing bench. Erik respected the man's nomadic tendencies as a sign of abundant testosterone, but that didn't mean he wouldn't tease the guy unmercifully about it. If they wanted him to pretend to have a brother he would do it with full sadistic abandon.

"Erik," Jakob growled warningly. When he didn't respond his father coughed and continued. "You should come visit sometime, too. It's been a long time."

That was true. The last time Erik had visited was Hanukkah a few years ago when the holiday had overlapped the days he got off for Christmas. It had been painfully awkward watching Elizabeth try to get in the groove of the Jewish tradition while still attempting to appease her son's nominal Christianity. He and James had bonded over their shared pity by getting gruesomely drunk and playfully fistfighting. Erik still had a scar. He hoped James did too.

"Maybe soon," he said.

Jakob coughed again, more miserably than usual and asked, "How's... _things_?" meaning his love-life. His father _hated _asking about it, but thought of it as his fatherly duty to support Erik's homosexuality and he was never one to shun duty.

Erik grinned, thinking of what he would have to say if were to be honest with his father: 'Well, now that you mention it, Dad, there's a hot piece of British real estate I've got my eye on and I fully plan on planting my flag in it later tonight. Trust me when I say you'd be proud.'

Instead he said: "Everything's good, Dad. I've got to go, though. On assignment and everything, you know how it is."

"Right, right," Jakob sighed with relief. "Well, be careful. I worry about you, out there all by yourself."

Erik couldn't help but be confused, even a little startled, by this. His father had never shown a great amount of concern regarding his solitude before: Jakob had been treating him like a grown man even _before_ he was one, so it was strange to get the babying treatment at this time of life.

"You do?" he queried accidentally.

"Of course. You know I...I was thinking of Mama today."

Erik's stomach clenched uncomfortably. They didn't talk about Mama too often. Hardly ever, in fact.

"Yeah? What...what'd you think of?"

"Just...she'd be so proud of you. She'd be sad we don't see each other so much. Hell, she'd be pissed as all getout at me," Jakob laughed. Erik smiled too.

"You should come out here sometime. We could go visit her, visit the old house..."

Jakob's voice was immediately gruff, business-like. "Well, you know how rough it is to leave the business. There's just no one to take care of it if I go. Locksmithing is tricky you know. You remember. I'd _like_ to—you know I'd _like_ to…"

Frowning bitterly, Erik ripped a swath of paint off the bench and cleared his throat violently. "Yeah. I know."

"It sure would be nice to have you up here to help me. I mean, if you're not pursuing this journalist stuff…"

"I am pursuing it. I work at a paper."

"You know what I mean." Erik did. His father referenced it enough. _If you're not working for The New York Times, if you're not interviewing the president, well, maybe youshould just reconsider taking over the family business then. If the Avalon Daily is as good as it's going to get…_

Erik's voice came out appropriately vindictive. "I've _really_ gotta go now."

"Erik," Jakob started, but he cut the man off.

"Bye, Dad."

He relented momentarily though, biting the inside of his mouth at his inability to follow through on his rebuke. "I love you."

As soon as his father had sighed but said it back he hung up, glaring at the porch and swinging the bench tetchily with one long leg.

He called Emma next, hoping she would manage to not piss him off. At least she wasn't likely to bring up his mother, or at least not remind him of the dissonance that had ruled his life since his mother's death.

"I've been trying to call you all day, you loafer," she answered the phone crossly. "Don't tell me you let that tart charm you into his bed already. I was hoping you'd wait until your job was _over_ before you succumbed."

"What can I say?" he sighed contentedly, allowing the playful back-and-forth of their arguments to cheer him back up. "You underestimated my desperation."

"Just a poor girl from the back country getting swept off her feet by a hot-shot rich boy," Emma cackled. "Make sure you finish sweeping out the fireplace before you bone your prince, Cinderella."

Erik rolled his eyes. Where did Emma come up with this stuff? He suspected romance novels had something to do with it.

"If he _were_ a rich prince you would have snatched him straight off the Greyhound."

"He's gayer than a maypole; what am I supposed to do with him? I told you I'd make it worth your while."

"So you threw a hottie in my way—that does not get you off the hook for this fucking house, believe me."

"You should be happy!" Emma balked. "A rich man who bats for your team, please send me a postcard when he's jetsetting you to Paris. A stop at _Cartier_ for me wouldn't be remiss."

Erik didn't point out that Emma was only offering him her refuse: if Charles had been bi she would have fought him for the man heartlessly enough. Nor did he argue that putting the brunet in his path was only fair payment for shipping him out to his death at a haunted house. As for Charles being rich, he guessed that made the man officially eccentric rather than crazy. Outside of that, he didn't care. It wasn't like the guy was likely to buy him a new car after one fuck, no matter how much he'd perfected his technique by now.

"If you're done gloating, I've got work to do."

"He must not be that good a lay; you're still your regular bitchy self."

"Goodbye, Emma," he threatened. The sadistic woman laughed jovially, but at least she finally got down to brass tacks.

"I only wanted to make sure everything was working out. You get some good material for the article?"

Erik thought of the vent, the basement. He thought of Charles' heated gaze, the swing of his hips as he walked.

"Yeah, some pretty good stuff," he said noncommittally.

"What angle are you thinking of taking? Fraud? Beleaguered simpleton? I'll start getting the paper geared up in that vein for your article."

She didn't mention the angle Erik was himself trying hard to resist: that Charles was on to something and this house really was awash with ghosts. Ridiculous.

"I haven't decided. I still have some more interview stuff to do," he claimed. Their first interview had had less to do with Charles, his team, and the Gone-Away House than it did with Charles' questionable intelligence-level, after all. Not the best ingredients for an awesome article.

"Just make sure it's admissible and not pillow-talk. The last thing I need is to hand Moira a story about the ADN getting sued for sexpionage or something seedy."

"I'll get any pillow talk on record so he can't wiggle out of it, you've got my word."

"I knew I didn't need to ask Hudson to make up the second bed," Emma laughed. "You're too predictable by half."

Confused, Erik questioned, "What second bed?"

"At the House. When I told Xavier he'd have a houseguest he had me get the caretaker, Mrs. Hudson, to set up the guest bedroom. He hadn't seen you at that point, though, so don't feel offended."

"Why would I need a bed at all?"

Well, he had been planning to use the one, of course, but not to sleep in, and he certainly didn't see why they'd need two to get anything done, unless maybe they broke the first one.

"Well are you going to sit up all night waiting for apparitions? That'll get boring fast."

Erik's whole body went cold, as if his blood had turned to ice. His limbs tingled, prickled. His ears rang with a thin metallic tone.

"Emma," he hissed, clutching his phone tighter in numb fingers. "What the _fuck _are you talking about?"

The woman, catching on to his distress, was quiet on the other end for a moment. "Did you...didn't you look at that dossier I gave you at all?"

She continued, probably accusing him of laziness, but Erik didn't bother trying to catch it, just hung up on her and _ran _out to his car to grab the dossier from where he'd thrown it to the backseat.

The very first page was a schedule.

He snatched it up and stuffed the rest of the papers haphazardly back into the car.

**_9:00- Pickup at Dewdrop Inn, Rm 237_**

**_11:00- Meet Hudson at Shaw House. _**_Get keys! She'll handle your meals, so don't ask me for the company card. I'm serious._

**_Overnight: Overview ghost-hunting. _**_Hudson has the guestroom set up for you, although I doubt you'll be needing it!_

**_8:00-Breakfast. Ghost crew arrives. _**_They have a van apparently, and I already gave them directions and your phone number, so keep your phone on!_

**_9:00-Bring GhostCrewer#1 to high school to develop film. _**_Principal will meet you at the parent's entrance at 9 sharp. Don't be late!_

Erik stopped reading because he didn't care about anything past Overnight. How could she want him to stay there overnight? How could Charles want to stay there overnight? How could Erik in good conscious book it the fuck out of there as soon as dusk settled and leave the brunet to his bloody fate?

Even thinking of a way to try to convince the stubborn man to leave with him was gut-wrenchingly daunting. It was fucking impossible. Ten minutes in and Erik could tell that Charles was stubborn to the point of madness. He'd rather try and get Newt Gingrich to a gay orgy than get Charles to leave before schedule. Hot as he knew he was, good as partners told him he was at sex, Erik had no illusions that he could _seduce_ Charles into pissing off. Charles would take him for all he was worth and smile undaunted into his request at the end of it, sated but unconvinced. He could tell.

In premeditated defeat he dropped his head into his shaking hand. What was there to do? If it was impossible to get Charles out of the house then what could he do? He could leave without Charles. He could pass up on this sweet, sultry, special temptation and sit at home consumed with lust for the rest of the evening.

Before his mind could even consider it his cock was _aching _with too much plaintiveness to be ignored. Okay, so that option was out. Walking away at this point might actually kill him from sexual frustration.

So what was he supposed to do? Wear Charles like an anti-ghost coat for the rest of the evening? Just stay right beside him, or over him, or under him. Don't leave his side and then fuck themselves into such a stupor that it was impossible for the house to terrify him. But how was he supposed to deal with the house in the meanwhile? In between dusk and fucking his brains out, what was he supposed to do?

Inspiration struck, and Erik looked up at the house nervously. Was Charles watching? Could he see?

Erik didn't look too hard—it felt too much as if he'd see something there he didn't want to see. Then he slipped quickly to his passenger seat, hurting his knees on the dried gravel and reaching an arm under the seat and grabbing the dark red tin he'd stuffed there back in college. Glancing at the house nervously again, he pried it open and checked through the contents: one pipe, two ancient buds of pot that he'd ignored since he'd landed his 'big' journalist job. Random drug testing was too scary for him to risk it—it wasn't something he wanted on his record, ever—but right now the house was scarier. Not scarier. He wasn't scared. But it was freakier. Was harder for him to deal with than Emma's drug test.

The lighter was old and took a few tries to light but Erik got it in the end and smoked very quickly, probably more quickly than was strictly effective. But this was not how he wanted Charles to find him. He thought the man was too worldly too be much disgusted by drug use, but in a perverse way the man was also hyperactively professional (when he wasn't hitting on his handler). Erik didn't for a moment think the man would be anything but disgusted to find Erik puffing away _on the job_ like some cheap high school dropout. He couldn't risk that. He was counting very highly, after all, on the man sleeping with him that night.

He didn't even waste time cleaning out his pipe afterwards like a good druggie. He clamped the lid back on and shoved the whole mess under the seat again and then shoved past his wallet in the glove compartment (pausing to extract some cash) and grabbed some cologne, spraying himself down more than was strictly proper.

Only then could he relax. He sat on the seat, muck boots scuffing in the gravel. He closed his eyes and let his body warm in the sun, let his head fill, weighted and full, heavy and cottony. That was nice. Yes…the pot might be old, but it was definitely still potent. And relaxing.

But Erik wasn't afforded much time to enjoy it before Charles was shouting at him again.

"Oi! What are you doing out there! I need help setting up these cameras!"

Grimacing in disgust, Erik sat up, but was saved from actually doing any such thing by the pizza truck pulling up to the bridge over the creek and honking desperately. It was apparently piloted by a total towner: too distrustful of the Gone Away House to even pull into the driveway.

Standing, Erik waved off Charles' requested and walked down, only slightly unsteadily, to get Charles' heart attack along with his own vegetarian option. The horizon jounced up and down up and down as he walked and Erik found himself grinning dumbly. It had obviously been too long since he'd last smoked and now he was acting like a complete idiot. Had to get this under control…Charles wasn't unobservant enough to not call him out, acting like this.

The driver was some speckle-faced teenager Erik didn't bother to recognize who noticed Erik's herb perfume right away, even under his cologne apparently.

"I didn't know you partied," the kid smiled, obviously about to offer to hook him up.

"I don't!" he snarled, and tossed the kid some bills to shut him up, snatching their piping hot food.

Charles waited excitedly on the porch, overjoyed at the sight of grease and Dr. Pepper.

He better be fucking serious about sleeping together because there was simply no goddamn way Erik was sleeping by himself in this house. If it came to that, he _would_ abandon the man to the ghosts out of spite and not look back once, the hard-hearted tease.


	15. Chapter 14

"Do you always pig out so abominably in front of men you're trying to seduce?" Erik questioned, grimacing as the man wrestled the pizza and soda away and cavorted them to the swing bench like a rabid animal dragging fresh meat back to its den.

Charles shook his hair back with his nose in the air, sitting daintily, barely managing to put his expensive camera out of the way of the flying grease.

"You have not yet begun to see me pig out," he replied in rich tones around a mouth full of garlic bread and cheese.

When Erik kicked off his boots and tried to sit himself down to pig out, too, the man slid his legs across the entire expanse of the bench and glared at him.

"You take your reek of an abomination to the other side of the patio, please, before you force me into bulimia," the Brit growled, pushing his vegetable pizza at him. It made his spine shiver that the man could growl so politely.

He didn't let on, though, just grabbed Charles by the ankles and pulled the man's legs off the bench, slipping beneath them and depositing them in his lap as he sat, balancing his pizza box on the man's shins and grinning through the sun at him. It was so bright he could only manage to look for a moment before he had to settle for assuming that the brunet wasn't pissed at him and turn away. The sun would be below the tree line soon, hopefully. Even if it wasn't, he preferred a face full of sunlight to eating in that nausea-inducing house.

"Mind if we eat and interview?" he questioned, manhandling his H2 out of his pocket and dropping it on the bench beside Charles' knees.

"I suppose we must," the man cleared his throat to say, twisting to pour himself a cup of soda. He liked the strain in Charles' legs in his lap as the man struggled to balance himself out of falling to the ground as he poured his drink. He couldn't resist the temptation to check out the man's ass as he did so. God damn but the man had one nice backside.

He blinked the pain and sunspots away from his eyes and pressed record on the H2.

Then he blanked out trying to think of something to ask besides "So, do you like to top or bottom? Because that ass it too gorgeous to waste on you topping."

He considered going for his notebook in his back pocket, which was filled with interview questions, but unfortunately all the questions were variations on "Why are you so stupid?" "Are you sad that you're so stupid?"

"You could ask me about the show," Charles grinned at him. He couldn't see the man grinning at him with that spotlight sun in his eyes, but it was very clear from his voice.

He took a bite of pizza as if that were the reason he hadn't come up with anything yet and said, "Sure, what's...have you ever heard something during your research? I mean...do ghosts even talk?"

"I think so. I have things on tape that are definitely supernatural, which I'm very proud of. But there are actually plenty of times I'm sure I've heard something but I just don't have the data to back me up, so it's rather a waste. That's really the most frustrating thing: when I know something's going on but just don't have it on record. That's fairly maddening."

"What did you hear?" Erik asked avidly, wishing he could withstand the light enough to look at the man. Instead he looked at Charles' shoe-laces beside him on the bench, tracing their pristine lines. God, was he high? He didn't feel very high but he'd never fingered someone's shoelaces before. Shit, had Charles noticed?

"We've got this great recording in Massachusetts, and right before the tape cuts out you can distinctly hear someone saying 'I told her'-it's magnificent. Before our time with Discovery Channel so it's not technically on the show. There was this time in Season One the producer is certain you can hear someone say "kill"-but I don't think it's very clear. It was while I was talking and you have to separate my voice from the disruption and it's rather skewed. Not impossible, though, so I let them include it."

Erik thought about the voices in the vent even though everything in his body screamed at him to not think about it.

"Could there be any other reason for something like that? Like infrasound or whatever?" Pizza seemed to have appeased the man into seeing this as a legitimate question and not an attack.

"There are permutations that could maybe make you think that you had heard something you hadn't-the human mind is an amazing organ. But none of those things could make you get something on tape that didn't exist. The most you could say is that I'm a liar and my team is made up of liars and we fake things onto tape that never happened."

Erik knew better than to say any such thing. He pet the man's shin in as conciliatory a manner as he could manage and said quickly, "That's ridiculous, of course. You're a pillar of professionalism."

"Good boy," Charles chuckled back to him, rubbing his leg against Erik's stomach for a second as a reward.

Erik _felt _that he knew what he'd heard, but who could trust one's feelings around infrasound? Maybe he _had_ imagined it. The tape would tell. If the team found something on his H2 he'd _know _he'd heard something real, something terrifying. There was no point in thinking about it at all until then.

"Why don't you tell me about your team," he grumbled, and Charles acquiesced.

He got the gloriously dull history of the team being put together (a bunch of paranormal dorks meeting on forums constantly and then being teased by Charles' sister into starting a research group (or, as she had phrased it, "Ghost Club").

"I didn't know you had a sister," Erik said, surprised. He chanced a quick glance and the man was grinning at him, head leaned against the back of the bench.

"Yes, well," Charles teased. "You've only known me for about twelve hours so I can't say that I'm surprised."

Blushing, Erik hoped the man would put it off as sudden sunburn rather than his actual embarrassment.

"What's she like?"

"You'll meet her tomorrow so I suppose I shouldn't bias your judgment," Charles laughed and Erik liked the way it shook through his whole body, through his calves and into Erik's own thighs. He dropped his pizza box to the ground and accepted Charles linen handkerchief, dark blue, to wipe his hands clean, shoving it into his own pocket when he was done.

"Give me something to work with. Is she older or younger?"

"Younger."

"What does she look like? Is she pretty?"

"Why, are you interested?"

Erik grinned at the porch and said, "Does she look like you? I've never been interested in women, but who knows? Maybe I've just found my gateway girl."

"…She'd have to look like me to entice you?" Charles questioned softly and Erik didn't need to look to see the kind of gaze he was getting. He felt his blush crawl all the way down his throat. He tried to shrug it off but wasn't sure of the success of the maneuver.

"Didn't you bring me a cup? Or did you plan on hogging all that carbonized sugar to yourself?" he coughed.

"You seemed to look down upon the practice of drinking soda so wholeheartedly that I was sure I would have to fend you off from throwing it into the river as opposed to drinking it yourself. Excuse me if this led me to leave you out of my grab for glasses."

Frowning, Erik eyed the door. How much did he want a cup? Enough to go back inside alone? He'd have to walk past the basement door...twice, technically.

Firmly decided, Erik reached over and grabbed Charles' cup out of his hand, ignoring the man's balking as he drained it quickly and handed it back.

"How on Earth do you not have a boyfriend?" the Brit growled. "It boggles the mind, truly."

"There are only 28 other gay men in this town: not exactly the sort of odds helpful in finding someone serious," he grumbled back. "You don't even have the excuse of a small town-why are _you _still single?"

"What can I say? I guess men aren't lining up for nomadic ghost-hunters with overbearing sisters and an addiction to chess. Who knew?" Charles sighed dramatically.

"I like chess," Erik mumbled. He couldn't tell if Charles had heard him-the man didn't respond. He didn't see how Charles could be serious, though. Even if the man were ugly, he was apparently rich and also on television: enough to keep anyone sunk to their knees in sex for the foreseeable future. On top of that Charles was actually unspeakably attractive and seductive as all getout. It was statistically impossible for him to not have marriage proposals on a weekly basis.

Before he could state as much, though, Charles swept his legs from his lap, sitting up and turning off his recorder.

"It's so nice here," he sighed heavily, leaning back beside Erik. "So quiet."

Erik thought he might be changing the subject, but was too distracted to follow up on the idea.

Because now that Erik thought about it, it was very quiet here, even more so than he was used to in the country. He stood up clumsily, leaning into the sun and the patio bannister. Shielding his eyes with one hand he tried to look into the forests at the side of the house, but he couldn't see any birds around here. And didn't that count as unassailable proof that there was something wrong with the Gone-Away House? What else did Charles need to be convinced? Forget seeing-he couldn't even _hear _any birds, which meant there weren't any around for acres maybe.

What he did hear was the loud click-whirrrr of an expensive camera right behind him.

Charles just looked innocently back at him when he turned to investigate the noise, camera poised to record his backside again.

"Did you just take a picture of my ass?" he growled disbelievingly.

Charles just shrugged as if this were a normal situation.

"It's paranormally sexy," the man explained cheekily. "Well within the parameters of my research."

Erik reached to snatch the camera from him but Charles just jerked back and snapped another picture.

"Okay, okay!" the man laughed, capping the lens as he dodged Erik again. "It's done, it's done!"

"Delete them!"

"We're not so modern: this is the film-camera. Hank's the only one allowed to handle the digital."

"You're burning the negatives before your team gets here."

Charles ignored him.

"I think it's time for _dessert _pizza," the man cheered, reaching for the box.

"You just ate half a coronary all by yourself," Erik reminded, sitting down again beside the brunet. "Do you really want to get dessert pizza involved in this?"

"Absolutely! You don't understand. Once my sister gets here I'll be lucky if I can sneak a KitKat without her sniffing it out. Essentially, she likes to pretend that I'm diabetic. Or maybe that I'm fat and in need of a diet."

_Unlikely, _Erik mused to himself, eyeing Charles' slim figure.

"Why don't you just tell her to fuck off?" he suggested.

"I guess I don't have your amazing interpersonal skills. Probably another reason I'm boyfriendless. If I had your innate ability to tell people to 'feck off' willy-nilly I'm sure my prospects would no doubt suddenly increase tenfold."

"Hey, some people genuinely need to be told to fuck off. There's nothing uncouth about that."

"She means well," Charles argued, licking icing off the side of his palm. Erik imagined fully and with great detail doing the same, taking the man by the wrist and swathing the skin there—or maybe on his long throat, feel the pulse beat against him, taste Charles' skin—salty but also sweet, of course.

"…What are you doing?" Charles questioned. Erik realized he was holding the man by the wrist.

"Nothing," Erik growled, letting him go immediately. "Stop licking yourself, for god's sake."

"Why, would you rather do it?"

He was mildly upset that Charles could tell so easily.


	16. Chapter 15

The sun finally drowned itself off in the treeline, but Erik couldn't tell completely how he felt about this. On the one hand it meant he got to look at Charles without being blinded; but on the other hand it meant that dusk was approaching fast. And Erik still wasn't sure what the night was going to bring. Illicit drugs seemed to have calmed him down without boggling his mind the way he remembered in college. Had he done it right? And keeping his nerves under control was only a portion of the equation which would decide how much he hated his overnight.

Was Charles going to stop with this charade and make a fucking move already? Or was he going to have to abandon this cocktease to a ghosthouse for the night to teach him a lesson in putting out? Was he going to be able to get ten yards out of the driveway without imaging those big baby blue eyes crying with torment at the hands of this house or was he going to have to speed back and throw Charles in his trunk to get the stubborn brat away for the night? It was hard to tell at the moment.

Even worse, Erik found it hard to focus on the conundrum on hand while Charles was being so distracting beside him on the bench.

With no direct sunlight to warm them, the air got cold fast, or at least Charles seemed to think so. He pressed in close to Erik's side as they spoke, his legs tucked half underneath him. His knee was pressed into Erik's thigh, and his body was hard and warm leaning heavily against Erik's. It was sweet and coy but was not an overt invitation to start having sex. It was incredibly maddening, made it a struggle to focus on what he was saying.

"You're just tempting me towards libel," Erik accused at Charles' newest divulgence. "Get my tape recorder so it's a quotable fact."

The man obeyed laughingly, pulling it up and pressing record, speaking right into the microphone.

"I, Charles Xavier, once got so shitfaced on Kentucky moonshine that they had to find a doppleganger to finish the filming of season 2 episode 4 on time."

"I don't know that I'd want to see you drunk. You're enough of a harlot sober."

"You've seen but a fraction of my harlotness as of yet, Mr. Lensherr," Charles claimed, lips curling smugly around that damned cinnamon-and-icing "pizza".

Erik genuinely hoped so, and stole a bite of the dessert in a way he knew was equally coy and inviting. Charles seemed to see it as nothing but a thieving travesty, though, glaring at him and jabbing him in the ribs.

"You have icing on you," Charles growled vengefully. Grinning, Erik just licked the corners of his lips, not sorry at all.

"Gone?" he questioned, smirking at the brunet. Charles gazed at him for a moment, face soft and almost pitying.

And then he was suddenly in Erik's space, sitting up on his knees, turning Erik's head fully towards him with one lithe hand. Before a thought had time to form beyond surprise, the man leaned in against him and swathed his tongue across his lower lip, stealing his breath away along with the possible dab of icing.

"There," the man breathed and Erik could feel the warmth of his breath on his face. Then the man shifted away, sitting back on his heels, his hand still warm against the nape of Erik's neck.

Erik waited for the obvious continuation of that almost-kiss, but it didn't come. Glancing up at the brunet, the man was watching him like a questionable science experiment. Erik was struck with the hesitancy of that look, as if after all the mutual flirting that had been going on all that day Charles still wasn't sure what Erik wanted. Maybe the man really was an idiot—who else could feel confused about how Erik planned for the night to go? Who else could be so beguilingly aggressive all day and then suddenly transform into such a shrinking violet? Oh well, he could make one tiny exception.

Sliding forward, Erik gripped him by his long brown hair and pulled him in for a rough, bruising kiss, swallowing Charles' grunt of surprise. The shock only lasted a moment before Charles recovered, pushing back against him and climbing into his goddamn lap.

He couldn't help but groan as those strong thighs spread themselves over him, as the man gripped him back just as passionately, as if he'd never been the kind of man who could look at someone he desired with a hint of hesitancy, any modicum of anxiety. Charles ground down into him with his hips, and _into_ him with his mouth. There was no putting it off. He'd been staring at that sweet ass for the better part of the day and it was impossible to ignore it now.

He slid his hands down Charles' body, feeling the strength of his shoulder blades, the straining of his ribs, the curve of his spine and hips, the down further to squeeze that firm ass, grazing his nails over taut thighs that were definitely going to be wrapped around his waist in as much time as it took for him to get them naked.

Except...

He pulled back slightly, knocking his head against the backboard by accident, running his hands thoroughly from the top of the man's hip bones down through his thighs just to be absolutely sure.

"Char-" That was as far as he got before the man captured his mouth again, biting his bottom lip meanly in chastisement. He was forced to reach up and push the man back by his collar in order to speak.

"Charles, are you...are you not wearing any underwear?" he panted.

He should have known it was silly to ask. The man just grinned at him cheekily, mouth redder than ever and eyes sparklingly bright even in the diminishing sunlight.

"Shall we say I was rather confident that I wouldn't be needing them?" Charles suggested with coy abandon.

"God, Charles," he hissed back. And grasping one hand into the man's hair and the other against an ass that was suddenly apparently swathed only in thin cotton slacks, he lunged up to reclaim those slick lips.

But lunging wasn't really a good idea in a rocking bench, especially with a full-grown man in one's lap. The bench seemed to swing out from under him of its own accord, toppling the both of them hard against the floorboards and pizza boxes, where Charles hit the ground with a yelp and a crack of skull.

"Shit!" Erik shouted, rolling to the side before he managed to inflict any more damage by crushing the brunet. Freed up from his weight, Charles groaned pathetically and held the back of his head where it had hit the floor, curling himself in a tortured ball.

"Fuck, Charles, I'm sorry-are you okay?" he wailed, trying to pull the man's hands away to see if there was any blood.

"You jerk; that hurt!" the man complained, tossing onto his back to glare at him fully.

"I didn't mean to-the bench did it-" Charles didn't allow him to continue to accuse the bench of malfeasance.

"Make it up to me, you lout, or you can bloody well forget the whole night," he growled like a domineering child. But there was a glint in his eyes that relieved Erik of the idea that the man had brain matter dripping out of the back of his skull from the fall.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked, grinning hesitantly. He didn't want to start pawing at the wounded man on the evidence of an eye-glint. He had been imagining more ridiculous things all day long. And still was, if that bench's suspected antics were anything to go on.

The man dropped his head back, those chestnut locks splaying out over the gray grain of patio paint, gazing up at him over cheeks still pink and gorgeous with exertion.

"_Please me_," Charles murmured imperiously, in a voice that was more breath than vibration.

Erik swallowed hard and fidgeted with the renewed vigor of his erection trapped snugly in his pants. Damn but he should have known this man would be the death of him. If he had an ounce of cum left inside him by morning it would be a miracle or a food group.


	17. Chapter 16

He licked his cinnamon-sweet lips and looked the man over greedily. The half-curled hair; the kissed-red lips; the tight cords of the man's throat that joined and subducted into the dark hollow of his manubrium; the flat stomach and the angular hips, the strong, fidgeting legs and everything in between them. It was a smorgasbord of sensuality and Erik wasn't sure where to begin.

Brushing his fingertips across the man's throat from jaw to collar, Erik slid to lie beside him before leaning over and following the trail of his hand with his lips.

Charles was flatteringly sensitive. He shivered under Erik's mouth and swallowed back a gasp. It was Erik's new mission to drive out of him a sigh that _couldn't _be swallowed down.

He shifted to the side of throat closest to him, and pressed his tongue momentarily to the drumming pulse point before covering it with his mouth and sucking hard. Charles jerked beneath him, hissing a breath through his teeth. Erik thought he could do better.

While his mouth alternated between gentle bites and rough sucks up and down that neckline, he sent the hand not currently supporting his weight to massage over the man's shoulder, a sensitive nipple, to brush barely over the ribcage, his stomach. With a rough tug he yanked the shirt out of its precise tuck and teased the barest tips of his fingers over a stomach that tightened reflexively under the feather-light assault.

"Is this a tickle-fight or are you going to show me something good?" the Brit growled breathlessly, twisting beneath his touch.

Erik pulled back and held the man's hip down roughly, loving the strain of the joint against his palm. Perfection.

Charles stared up at him in the colorful glow of the sunset, his eyes more black than blue and Erik knew for a fact that he'd never seen anything as gorgeous.

Then the brunet was sliding those talented hands through his hair, making his scalp tingle, and was pulling him down into a plying kiss.

Tilting his head at an angle the man pressed up into his mouth, licking his way inside, forcing a groan with the gentle slide of his tongue against Erik's. He shifted over the smaller man, easing a knee between the man's legs to hold his weight, a teasing hover that gave him a good angle over the other man but still kept anything fun from touching.

Groaning petulantly into his mouth, Charles fidgeted beneath him, arching up for some kind of contact, anything.

"I said _'please _me'-not _'tease _me'," the man huffed at him, pulling his hair slightly.

"If I touched you," Erik murmured close, so that his lips barely grazed Charles' as he spoke. He skimmed his free palm down over the folds of Charles' thin shirt, the buttons over his stomach, the buckle of his belt and the pleats of his pants. "Would that please you?"

His heart thudded hard in his chest watching the man's lids slide closed as he grazed a knuckle over the outline of his erection in his gray summer slacks.

"Yes," Charles sighed, arching into his touch and licking his dark lips. "Yes, oh yes."

Erik didn't pull away from the man's writhing pressure, just pushed back, massaging that cock roughly through his pants, shivering at Charles' wrecked moan and the way his hips shuddered under his touch. He could hear the man's expensive shoes scraping along the woodwork as he twisted.

And then Charles was yanking him down for a bruising kiss, scraping his teeth over Erik's lips, sucking on his tongue, licking past his teeth and leaving him breathless and panting. He couldn't help himself any longer, but dropped his weight into the valley of Charles' thighs, wrapped an arm around that coiling waist and ground down into the delicious friction of the other man's body and all it promised.

Charles didn't begrudge him his loss of control, just clutched at the back of his waistcoat and squeezed his skinny hips in the vice of strong thighs. One hand sunk into the fabric at the man's shoulder and the other scraping furrows into the back of Charles' thigh, digging fingertips into the flesh of his ass and yanking those hips up to meet his clothed thrusts more forcefully, Erik yanked his mouth away from the smaller man, holding back to hear those heady moans rather than feel them through his tongue.

He got all that and more. He got the gasped pleas, the huffs of his name from those wine-red lips, but he also got the slick sheen of them, the pink flush of cheeks, the fluttering helplessness of eyelashes blocking off eyes somehow all the bluer for the eclipse of a pupil.

Groaning low and scraping hips slow over a heated erection, Erik dropped his head into the other man's neck, kissing, licking. He scraped the edge of his teeth down the line of the man's jugular, shocked by the tortured cry and the violent shiver it elicited.

He pulled back and just stared. He'd had no idea that man was capable of making a sound like that, or that he himself was capable of _making _the man make a sound like that. He dropped back eagerly and did it again, gripping hard into the shuddering body trapped beneath his weight as Charles keened out his name. He could feel the man's heartbeat drumming erratically against him through clothing that he was all too eager to get rid of at this point.

The sounds coming from the Brit were wasted on these vast outdoors. Erik wanted to bottle them for his own personal use so that not an ounce of them would be squandered.

While he was distracted, Charles shoved a hand into the floorboards and knocked him over, slamming Erik, helpless with surprise, into the patio and straddling him in one fluid motion, pinning him to the ground with a tight grip on both biceps.

"You want to fuck me, don't you, Mr Lensherr?" the man huffed, grazing very purposefully against his erection. Erik choked back a cry and gripped Charles' teasing hips. Those glinting blue eyes did not bode well for him, but he was too far gone to think up a lie, no matter the possible consequences.

"Yes, Charles," he hissed, arching his hips into the weight above him. Charles pulled away, too far for Erik's hips to reach him, making him keen with frustration.

"We haven't discussed it, you know. Maybe that pert arse of yours is too sweet to waste on topping?" Charles teased, and Erik's mind sparked with shock because those words sounded familiar: hadn't he been thinking about the same thing regarding Charles' rounded cheeks?

"How about this," Charles proposed while Erik was busy struggling to think. "Whomever gets to the bedroom first gets to top."

Erik just blinked up at him.

"You can't be serio-" but then the man was lunging off him to the door and there was no time to doubt him.

On the one hand Erik thought that this was childish and they should discuss who would get to be on top like reasonable adults. On the other hand he knew that if Charles did get to the bedroom first the man would spend the night with blue balls before he was goaded to accept a do-over.

So as Charles yanked the front door open, Erik cut inside ahead of him. But as he gained purchase on the first step, Charles shoved him out of the way to replace him. Growling, Erik didn't bother to fight him for the main staircase, sprinting instead to the back path and taking the steps three at a time, the library a blur, he leapt to get his hand on the door handle before Charles could get it.

But there was no Charles to beat out for it.

The hallway was empty.


	18. Chapter 17

The hallway was dim with the approaching dusk, and the silence of the house was oppressive in Erik's ears. Mouth dry, heart hammering erratically at his sternum, he swallowed and tried to speak, to call out, but nothing could get past the knot of his throat. He made a choking noise, body so tense it was painful, and was just about start fully hyperventilating when Charles' mussed brown mop of hair poked itself around the corner.

"Oh," the Brit chimed happily. "You won. Good on you, old boy."

Erik funneled all his useless terror into ire.

"How do you feel about spanking, you dick, because I've got half a mind to take you over my knee!" he snarled, shoving the bedroom door and pointing Charles inside with as much wrath as an index finger was capable of mustering.

The man's gait was as sultry as ever, completely unfazed by Erik's rage.

"I said you could top me, not beat me, you heathen," the man huffed, nose in the air as he walked past. Before those hips could get away from him Erik slapped his ass hard, making him yelp and jump. He was damned well fazed now, the bastard.

"That's quite enough!" Charles wailed at him, hands fending him off as he prowled forward and Charles retreated anxiously, blocked off by the bed. "It was just a joke!"

"Do I look like I have a sense of humor?" he growled back, swiping out again and connecting loudly with Charles' right flank. The man yelped anew, cutting off when Erik grabbed him by the shirtfront and muffled the sound with his mouth, pressing his tongue inside and rubbing the man's ache away with a strong hand to his bottom.

Charles collapsed out from under him onto the bed and Erik shivered to see the burning heat of the brunet's eyes as he shifted, crawling backwards across the mattress, scraping a soled instep against Erik's thigh as he did so.

"You got yours, now I get mine. Take your clothes off, Mr Lensherr. Unwrap my present for me," the man grinned up at him, dropping his head into the cradle of his interlaced fingers. This pulled his shirt up, showing off a scarce sliver of skin between his belt buckle and his wife-beater and making Erik's mouth water.

He swallowed back the rush of saliva and smiled back with much tooth before sliding one knee along the outside of Charles' thigh as he shifted onto the bed, straddling the smaller man's hips as he unbuttoned his waistcoat.

"God, why did I leave my camera downstairs?" Charles hissed, reaching out to caress his fingertips over the fronts of Erik's hipbones.

"You'll have to take a mental picture," Erik suggested, tossing his waistcoat away and bending down, taking Charles' face in his hands and tilting it so he could just barely brush his lips over the other man's. He gasped when Charles gripped his ass, his thighs, hard. "Remember our deal," he reminded gruffly.

"I haven't forgotten," Charles murmured against his lips, tugging, trying to get his weight on top of him. "Take your clothes off, please."

Erik shook his head.

"Your turn," he replied, moving a hand to deal with Charles' shirt buttons while the other held the Brit still by the hair and ravaged his mouth. He didn't bother being gentle, definitely ripped a few of the buttons free when he couldn't slip them out. Charles didn't seem to mind although if he had he would have had a hard time saying anything about with Erik commandeering his mouth.

Last button grappled loose, he knelt up to witness his handiwork.

Charles' mouth was slick with his saliva, panting and harassed. His throat was marked up to high heaven, making Erik grin proudly. Chest heaving trying to suck in breath, the man blinked up at the ceiling trying to figure out where Erik had gone to. He found him when Erik started yanking the dress shirt off his back, literally, pulling it off his shoulders. He got it most of the way off before he remembered to unbutton the cuffs, growling peevishly when he realized his mistake.

"Please leave them intact," Charles requested smugly, rolling his hips enticingly under Erik's weight.

Erik did try, but it was a difficult task, made more difficult by distraction.

"Do you smell smoke?" he questioned suddenly, sure that he did—or, rather, sure that he thought he did. He glanced back at the open door, but didn't see anything. Under him, Charles just laughed.

"Why, because I'm on fire? We're already in bed together, Erik, you needn't waste your cheesy pick up lines on me."

And with that, the man shoved him over onto his back, clamoring up on top of him and tugging gently but at the same time impatiently at his trousers' hook-and-bar impediment.

"Now, let's see what we're working with here," he murmured excitedly, looking like a kid at his birthday party.

Erik wanted to argue that he wasn't joking, but Charles was writhing between his legs, breathing against his crotch impatiently as the clasp and then the inner button both finally came loose. Fuck it—he'd burn to death—whatever.

Erik moaned wantonly as the man unzipped his pants using only his talented mouth-breathing hot against him.

Then Charles pulled back, staring at him eagerly as he dug both hands into his waistline and yanked his pants and underwear down to his thighs in one quick tug.

"Oh. My. God," Charles hissed, his breath raking against Erik's sensitive and twitching skin.

He glanced down nervously. Was that a good exclamation or a bad one? He knew, of course, he was outside the realm of normality when it came to his appendage, and there were always some people who weren't up for hopping on that bandwagon. Erik had started out his gay career with an unalloyed desire to top until he had figured out that with his anatomy he'd have more takers if he learned to like bottoming.

He had, but that didn't mean he'd be thrilled with Charles shying away from his overachieving cock and reneging on their deal.

"Is that good or bad?" he questioned nervously of Charles' awestruck demeanor.

The brunet simply beamed back at him.

"This is the best early Christmas present anyone has ever given me," Charles explained, and then turned that smile down to his straining erection and turned reverent. "Oh thank you, sweet baby Jesus, for making such a glorious penis. You truly are a gracious god."

Erik twisted with the man's lips just beginning to brush over him, so scarcely that he could have imagined it. He still managed to growl, though. "Baby Jesus had nothing to do with my cock!"

"Oh I give thanks before You, Living and Eternal King," Charles chanted heart-warmingly until Eirk cut him off with a wail.

"Stop that! Get up here if that's all you have to say."

Instead Charles caressed his cheek over his lengthy erection, maddeningly gently.

"Oh sweet cock," the Brit sighed to it, kissing it like a long-lost friend. "I'm sorry I blasphemed against you and said you belonged in a matchstick museum. Can you ever forgive me?"

Erik would be choking back laughter if he weren't already choking back tears at Charles' teasing treatment, barely brushing over the thing, pinning his hips down so he couldn't thrust up harder.

"Leave my cock alone if you're not going to do anything worthwhile with it!" he whined, shoving himself up onto his elbows to properly shout at the man.

Charles reached up and put one hand over his face, pushing him back again.

"Quiet, this doesn't concern you," he insisted, lying his head down on Erik's bare hip as if he'd converse with his cock all night. "This is between me and my new love. Does it have a name?"

Keening, Erik dropped back onto his shoulders, covering face in his hands bitterly. He had never seen sex as a venue for comedy and he now understood why: it was simply too sensitive an area to introduce fun-loving teasing into. He wanted _sex_, not a night at the Apollo. Maybe tomorrow he'd be able to look back on this with good humor, but at the moment he wanted his cock coupled with a sensation, not a conversation partner.

"Stop that immediately," he demanded and Charles finally tore his eyes away from his cock, glancing up at him with a grin.

"So serious, Mr. Lensherr! All right."

And with that the man gripped him securely around the base and swallowed him down.

Erik couldn't help it, he cried out, arched into that wet heat of a mouth and hoped he hadn't hurt Charles. He had to be careful with this thing-he couldn't just thrust around impetuously, whenever he felt like it.

But the Brit didn't pull away or gag, just bobbed him in even deeper, working hard to apparently get down to the base of him while Erik looked on in awe at the prospective accomplishment, at the stretch of the man's so-red lips and the hollow of his cheeks, the tautness of his jaw as he sucked him hard, almost studiously.

Part of the way down and the man pulled back, sucking at the tip of him, tongueing away precome before dipping back down, farther than last time, rolling his throat and making Erik pant like an Olympic swimmer.

He squeezed his eyes shut and put all of his focus into not arching himself deeply down the Brit's throat, so there was no focus left over to keep himself from moaning, which he did embarrassingly loudly.

It didn't help that Charles wasn't satisfied with driving him mad with his mouth only. While one hand was busy clutching him tight around the base, shifting up and down the shaft lazily, the other scratched into the curve of his spine, into the soft flesh of his ass, into the groove between buttock and thigh. The lithe fingers chaffed the inside of his thigh, squeezing and then caressing.

He choked, feeling himself at the back of Charles' throat, eyes falling open in surprise and—

And he could see his breath.

He grunted in surprise and Charles moaned back to him, making his spine clench even as confusion stole some points from ardor. With each puff of air he could see the ghostly gray-white smoke of his breath in the air, and yet he wasn't cold at all—was even a little too hot.

"Charles," he groaned, grasping for the man's shoulder. "Charles, look."

The brunet pulled off him with surprise, brow furrowed. "What?" he questioned, but then turned cheeky with the sight of Erik's flushed body and huffing breath although he was having a hard time getting it to smoke again. "Ohh—I know what you want."

And falling back to work even more energetically than before, the brunet looked up at him through his eyelashes and Erik had to dig his hands into the mattress to anchor himself against the urge to fuck away at that mouth. Those eyes glinted playfully. _Watch this, _they seemed to say. And Erik was watching, he'd never be able to tear his eyes away from watching.

Until Charles went from impish to determined and sucked him down all the way to the hilt as practiced as if they'd been doing this for years, nuzzling into the dark stiff hairs for a moment and Erik's eyes rolled back and it took every ounce of his control to not thrust up, to not come down that hot throat.

When the Brit pulled back completely, eyes more black than blue, licking saliva and precum off swollen lips and pumping Erik's cock just because he could, it was more than he could bear.

He lent a hand to squeeze himself around the hilt of his taut erection, willing himself to get a handle on this situation before he embarrassed himself.

"I think it's time for a condom," Charles murmured, nuzzling into his crotch as if he owned the place.

Erik only blinked up at the blank ceiling, arranging prepositions alphabetically and trying to force himself into a state in which he wouldn't spontaneously come.

"Where are they?" he huffed when he could speak again. He could send Charles for them, he knew, but a few moments alone would do him well. Charles shivered happily and leapt up to all fours, kissing him harshly and eagerly.

"Bathroom," he said, kissing between words. "In my bag."

Erik took a deep breath and slipped out of from under the brunet, dragging the man's bags from the bed to the floor as he stood, limping to the bathroom.

"I'll wait for you, shall I?" Charles asked cheekily, rolling onto his back and caressing himself through his tight slacks.

"Don't get too far ahead of yourself," Erik warned.

* * *

The toiletries bag was sitting on the counter and Erik rifled through it, trying to ignore his painfully erect cock, still slick with saliva. He tried to consider if it might not be better to just work this one out himself and then do Charles right, but who knew if Charles would be willing to stick around for a round two? It seemed more likely that the man would meet his initiative with an imperious: "You want to do it yourself? Fine, do it yourself the rest of the night. Have fun in the guest room." And Erik couldn't risk that.

So he examined the man's electric razor and mini shaving gel; he read the properties of Charles' whitening toothpaste; he flipped through the various types of condoms represented like a UN summit of prophylactics in a zipped compartment.

There was lubricated, which Erik loathed, ribbed, which Erik loved, glow-in-the-dark, which confused him, and even some strange condom with a colorful logo he had only ever seen on women's purses, which he wasn't sure what to make of. He found a suitable Magnum, which someone, Charles he supposed, had drawn a heart on in permanent marker. Grinning, he nabbed it and a couple plastic slips of travel-lube.

He was just working on getting the damn thing open when he felt the cupboard door tap open against his shin.

Backing up enough to look down, two gray eyes stared back at him from the shadows of a black charred face, flaking ash as it came at him.

He slammed backwards away from the figure slowly emerging from the cupboard, now a naked burnt shoulder, an arm, and hand reaching towards him, ash, ash flaking everywhere, the smell of burnt flesh, the taste of it in his mouth as he screamed.

He lunged for the door, shoving his full weight against it for his life but the wood wouldn't come loose from its frame and he could hear the creak of the cupboard door opening further, the scrape of the thing sliding from its hole, the charcoal scratch in his ears of the thing crusting up against itself. Screaming, pounding to be let out, he could feel the creature getting closer, feel himself hyperventilating and on the point of passing out and he didn't want to pass out in here with that, didn't want to be alone with that-he screamed for Charles and then the man was there, forcing the door open and catching him when he collapsed through it, scrabbling to get away.

"The cupboard," he gasped through a throat quickly constricting against air flow, shoving his rescuer forward into a completely empty bathroom, the cupboard door wide open and a half-opened condom and packets of lube strewn on the floor.

"What? What's wrong with the cupboard?" the man balked, panicking at Erik's state. He had to hold himself up by the doorframe. His legs were trembling too hard to sustain his weight.

"There-it was there-in the cupboard!" he cried, voice strangled. He struggled to massage it into working order but his hand was shaking so hard.

Charles was confused, obviously, but dropped down to kneel in front of the thing, peering in too closely for Erik's tastes. He couldn't manage anything more disciplinary than a nervous keen though. He needed a hand to keep him standing.

"Erik, there's nothing," Charles said, sitting back on his heels and looking up at him anxiously. Then a spared glance, less anxious and more despondent, for Erik's cock, completely flaccid now and how could it not be after something like that?

Blushing hard, he shoved himself back into his pants and glared down at the man.

"I saw it," he growled. "I know what I saw." But he didn't sound as sure of the second sentence-because what the fuck had he seen? Those gimlet eyes gleaming at him, the taste of it still in his mouth, the scrape still prevalent in his ears of the thing sliding out of his hole coming after him.

"I ca-an't-ca-a," he hyperventilated, backing away, trying to shake the vision and every other sensation from him but they pressed in close on his mind, constricting and claustrophobic. He scrabbled at his throat, trying to work a way to breathe, but Charles pulled it loose, unbuttoning the first few buttons of his shirt and fanning him.

"I can't-" he gasped as if the air had been knocked out of him, skin burning hot but chilled at the same time.

"Come on-fresh air," Charles insisted, dragging him to the window, but Erik dragged back. He didn't want a window, he wanted a door, an _exit_.

"I can't stay here," he mustered enough breath to growl, yanking his arm out of Charles' grip and backing up towards the door. But he couldn't go alone. He couldn't be anywhere in this house alone, it seemed. "Please," he gasped, reaching towards the smaller man and the man reached back, taking him by the hand, wrapping his free arm around Erik's waist. He realized he was still shaking hard, but he felt better with Charles' scent replacing the taste of charred flesh in his mouth.

"Come on," Charles murmured, rubbing his back. "I'll take you home."


	19. Chapter 18

The drive back was rough. He was too shaken to manage a car and hardly audible enough to give Charles directions. It was too dark and when he put the light on inside, Charles complained that he couldn't see. The man didn't flip it off, though, which he appreciated. It was dark enough on the outside of the car without the inside being dark, too.

He locked the doors and sat sideways in his seat so he could keep an eye on the backseat at the same time. He ignored Charles asking what he had seen because it was too dark to talk about it safely and he didn't breathe easy until they reached the lights of town, able to point Charles to his loft without sounding as if he were hypothermic.

Relief only really hit him, though, once he was through his own front door. His kitchen, his small dining room table, his leather couch with the wrought-iron-and-glass coffee table. Everything was familiar and safe and nothing was out of place or coming to get him. He was safe here.

Dread still managed to seep through, though, when he noticed that Charles didn't follow him in or copy his act of taking off his mud-caked footwear.

Turning to stand with the man in his door frame, he shifted nervously.

"Are you going to be okay?" Charles asked him, holding his hand.

Erik smiled wanly at the comforting act, nodded. But then Charles let him go.

"I'll just catch a cab back, then. I'll have my phone on me, so feel free to call if you need anything-anything at all. My number's in your dossier."

Erik lunged and caught the man by his unbuttoned shirt as he turned to leave.

"Where are you going?" he trilled, getting a better grip with both hands fisting the fabric at the man's sides.

Charles stared down at his grasp and then back up, eyes wide.

"Well...back to the house! Someone has to monitor it for the night. And I have to find whatever it was you saw..."

Erik couldn't control his shaking past the first sentence, shivering down to his bones at the thought of Charles in that house alone with that thing, _searching _for it-that thing from under the-he couldn't even think of it-_he refused to think of it_.

"You ca~an't-" he hyperventilated. "You _can't-_"

"Erik!" the man exclaimed, obviously worried at his reaction, trying to still Erik's palsy by holding him close to his chest. Erik held him back tightly, refusing to let him go back to that house. He _had _to think of a way to keep him from the house.

But his mind wasn't in working order and only one idea could slog its way through his panic. Luckily it was one that had all the hallmarks of success.

"Please," he begged, holding Charles' solid weight hard against his shaking body. "Please stay. I need you. Please."

No way was Charles hard-hearted enough to turn that down.

Sure enough, the smaller man stroked his back and spoke into his skin.

"Of course...of course if you want me to stay I'll stay..."

Sighing again, he slipped loose, dragging his exhausted body up to bed.

Charles kicked off his shoes and followed him up. There were no sexual undertones as Erik stripped down to his boxers and fumbled his way into his high school sweatpants and sweatshirt, at least not for him. Charles must have not been provoked too badly by the scene because he only asked if he could borrow his laptop, not if he could fuck him.

"It's downstairs in the office. You can set it up anywhere. The password is 'thwhite'-all lowercase. No punctuation," Erik huffed as he collapsed into bed, wanting nothing more than to sleep for years, sleep until that house had burned down to cinders, until the earth had swallowed it up off the face of the earth.

He didn't think he'd ever felt so exhausted in his life. Maybe after his mother's funeral. He was still shivering even under his heavy covers and sweats. He thought about turning off the air-conditioning but didn't want to get up.

"Okay...um, would it be all right if I borrowed some pajamas? Only, my bag's still at the House…"

Erik shuddered at even the name, refusing to think about it.

"Take whatever you want," he grumbled, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to fall asleep quickly. Unconsciousness couldn't come fast enough for him. Why didn't he have any sleeping pills in the house? Or heroin? He wondered if Charles was capable of punching someone in the head so hard that they passed out. Even if the man _were_ capable of it, Erik didn't think he had the energy to convince him to actually do it. Damn.

* * *

Erik realized his mistake as soon as Charles left the room.

Because without Charles there, it was just him and his thoughts, and not even his thoughts but the sort of rampant imagination that hadn't plagued him this cruelly since he was young enough to be afraid on camp-outs.

Just as when he was seven and his brain would try to convince him that a man-eating bear was going to drive its claws through his tent to cut him up, his brain now wouldn't let him stop imagining that face-that burnt scorched face, staring at him from the shadows of the cupboard, the gleaming gunmetal gray eyes staring into him.

It forced him to imagine those eyes peering at him from the edge of his bed. He'd never loathed his furniture set up so much before: with his bed jutting into the middle of the room there were three sides for that face to peek at him over. His brain didn't stop there, either, proving itself a better imaginarium than he had ever suspected. He seemed to be able to hear the rasp of the creature's dead breath, feel the weight of its attention and even its _touch _on him, taste its ash in his mouth, smell the cooked reek of its flesh.

He only managed to survive a few minutes of the traumatizing onslaught before he jumped from the bed the same way he had as a child, aiming to get far enough away from the furniture so that nothing could reach out from under it and grab him.

Charles was sitting at the dining room table with his laptop, typing away single-mindedly. Even with his back to the staircase, though, he heard Erik coming, twisting in his chair to stare at him questioningly. Erik saw that the man had raided his linen closet and set up a bed on the couch. He hoped Charles wasn't too devoted to that idea.

"Sorry, am I keeping you up? I'm nearly done," the Brit said. He was dressed in Erik's clothes, a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a heavy sweater he thought he'd donated.

"Can you sleep up there with me?" he asked before he'd planned on what to ask, approaching close. He held the man by the shoulders, felt better with him in hand, more certain of what was real and what wasn't. "I mean, did you _want _to sleep on the couch?"

"I...I don't mind. I can sleep with you," Charles coughed, holding his hands back over his collarbones.

Relieved, Erik huffed out a breath and leaned down, resting his forehead in the crown of Charles' hair and just breathing him in for a second to cleanse his palate.

"I'll just finish this email real quick, okay?" the man murmured, chafing his hands before going back to typing, faster than ever.

Tired and feeling as if his mind were finally going to allow him to sleep, Erik turned and slipped down to sit beside Charles' legs, resting his head on the man's thigh and closing his eyes.

No images assailed him, just the heat of Charles' body and the importance of it, of everything Charles' body meant. He heard the man clicking out of things, and then blunt nails were scraping through his hair blissfully.

"Okay," Charles murmured. "I'm done."

It was a struggle to get back to his feet, but he managed it with Charles' help, let the man lead him back upstairs with an arm around his waist and his own arm heavy around the man's sturdy shoulders.

He was nervous for a moment before Charles climbed into bed with him; only then could he manage to relax into his exhaustion. He moved closer, wrapping an arm around the man's waist before he remembered that he should probably ask before he did things like this. He wasn't dating Charles, he hadn't even slept with Charles. He had no hold on him.

"S'okay?" he attempted to mumble from where he'd buried his face into the man's woolen bicep.

Charles just let out a breath and stroked his arm under the covers.

Erik was asleep in no time.

He dreamt of a door opening to a doctor's office with three stone wells. A dozen different voices were screaming his name. The room was on fire.

He awoke and it was the middle of the night, still and black, with only the scarce light of the street lamps seeping through his blinds.

He could hear his own breathing in the dark, and Charles', slower, calmer.

Turning and pushing himself up on an elbow he looked down at his temporary bed-partner, shaded in blue and black. The man slept on his side with his legs bent in front of him. One arm hidden under his pillow, the other rested lax on the dark sheets and Erik stared at it for a moment just memorizing the shaded planes of it, the dusk to navy pallet.

He dropped back to the bed, shifted his legs so his knees pushed against Charles' calves, buried his face in the nape of the other man's neck where the duvet trapped the homey smell of him. He put his arm around the other man's waist under the heavy covers, pulling the hips back against his stomach so he could feel Charles warm and heavy against him from his head down to his shins.

The brunet stretched in his arms, waking at the contact.

"Are you okay?" Charles whispered, turning, and his shoulder was a comforting pressure against Erik's jaw.

The other man pulled his arm away, turned completely in the circle of it and tangled their legs together. He put his arm under Erik's neck and wrapped it around his shoulders, pressing Erik's face into his own throat. The comforting scent of the man was even more pronounced here, or maybe the comfort stemmed from the free hand carding through his hair, the warm weight of an arm around his shoulders, the soft, murmury voice repeating "Shhh, it's okay, you're okay, shhhhh, shhhhh."

Erik held him around the waist again and fell back asleep.


	20. Chapter 19

A/N: I just wanted to thank all of you for reading and reviewing. I'm so happy that you guys like this story, despite the fact that I'm the worst person ever for not updating as regularly as I normally do . I'm reworking and rewriting bits and pieces of this as I go and I think replacing is even more difficult than just writing from scratch. Anyway, I appreciate you guys so very much and, as a treat: here's lots of porn. Like...LOTS. I was going to split this chapter into 2 parts since it's so huge, but...yeah. It's kind of hard to split a giant sex scene in half... Enjoy!

* * *

Erik woke up because someone was staring at him, and, because of this, adrenaline jerked him straight from dreaming into tense wakefulness so quickly he felt dizzy and sick.

He was right, someone was staring at him.

Charles, propped up on an elbow, grinned down at him shamelessly in the weak, watery sunlight. It must still be very early.

Shaking a sigh free, Erik relaxed back into the pillows, rubbing the grit from his eyes.

"You were talking in your sleep," Charles explained happily, reaching over and rubbing his hair affectionately. "You were saying my name."

Alert again, Erik stared up at the bright-eyed man, not sure what he should make of this or what Charles made of it.

The Brit grinned joyfully, lips as red as Erik remembered. "You said it in an incredibly creepy voice, too. Gave me shivers." To give an idea of what he meant, Charles croaked long and wavery: "_Chhhhaaaarrrrsssss_."

"Your name is Chars now, huh?" he croaked back.

"I'll work on your pronunciation a bit later, my little Pygmalion."

Laughing, Erik pushed at him half-heartedly, surprised that he was still capable of laughing after everything. Charles caught his hand easily, pressing it to his throat for a moment before leaning over Erik's body and then slipping his palm down under the covers and cupping Erik's interesting bits through his sweats.

"Were you having a wet dream of me, Mr. Lensherr?" the man murmured, licking his dark lips and goading him to hardness with deft fingers.

Erik huffed a breath, considered telling Charles he was too tired. He _was _tired. But more than his fatigue was the intense desire to push off reality just a little bit longer. He wanted to forget for as long as it was possible, and if Charles was offering himself up as a distraction then what was the harm in it?

So he turned towards the brunet, towards the shadow of ginger stubble he could see on Charles' jaw and the underside of his chin, towards the cords of his throat and the deep red of his lips.

Charles noticed, jerking his eyes up from where they were staring at the bumps and grooves his ministrations were making in the comforter. His hand stilled as he stared, almost surprised, into Erik's eyes, his own so blue even in the dimness of the gray sunrise. Erik reached up, caressing the gentle hollow of his cheek, the stubble barely catching at the ridges of his fingertips. He coaxed the man in close, grazed their lips together, breathed him in.

Beneath the covers Charles moved his hand up, under Erik's sweatshirt, stroking his stomach and his ribs, deepening the kiss but not roughening it; still gentle, still soft. He brushed his tongue against Erik's lips, and then, when Erik parted a path, against Erik's own tongue, making him shiver-either from that or from Charles' fingertips grazing a nipple, he wasn't sure.

Groaning slightly, Erik arched into his touch, and Charles reciprocated, moving closer, slipping a leg between Erik's and grinding unhurriedly against his hip, nails catching at his chest.

If the man was going to rut against him he could at least do it where he was helpful. Erik glided an arm around his waist and shifted him over so he was pressed completely over Erik's body, didn't release him but pulled him in tighter so he could stretch up into him, the warm weight of him, the delicious friction.

Charles gasped into his mouth, grinding down just as avidly as Erik was arching up, scraping the lengths of their growing erections together inside their respective pajamas. Too many clothes, and too thick. With a quick move he slid a hand down inside Charles' clothes, under his pajama pants and under his underwear, against his hot smooth flesh. But he had thought that Charles wasn't wearing underwear? No, that's right-that was yesterday.

Pulling back, Erik stared up at the smaller man. Whose underwear was he wearing, then?

He didn't bother asking-he'd only get a cheeky response anyway. Instead he reinstated his grip on the man and used it to roll him onto his back and situate himself on top of him, tugging the blankets out of his way and out of their tangle, burying with his longer, bigger, heavier body. The only thing he wanted tangled up in him right now was Charles.

He sat back and dug his hands into the thick wool sweater, yanked it along Charles' twitching frame, up and over his head. He'd seen the man in his thin wife-beater before, just last night, yesterday morning, this was nothing he hadn't had every reason to expect, but he was affected all the same. The hollows of the collarbones and the marks Erik's mouth had put there, the firm chest, the dark rosy nipples, the sparse hair and the flat, soft stomach, all of it beautiful and going straight from his eyes to his brain to his cock.

He dropped down again, adding to the splay of bruises across Charles' throat and collar, expanding their domain even lower.

"Please, god, Erik, please," the man panted, scrabbling his blunt nails under Erik's sweatshirt and against his shoulder, his spine and the back of his neck. He imagined the bright pink marks those nails were scratching into his skin and moaned into Charles' navel. He kissed the man there as atonement for pulling away, even if it was only to peel those flannels off.

He went slowly, not to tease but to taste every moment of it, the slow reveal of Charles' tensed, muscular legs, and his own gunmetal gray boxer briefs dark against Charles' pale skin. He was sure they'd never looked so mouth-watering on him. It helped that he could trace the outline of Charles' straining cock on them, see the darkening dab of precum at the tip, spreading as the man strained against the fabric as his only source of friction.

Jealous still, Erik pulled all the way back into his kneel so he'd have enough room to drag them and the pajamas completely off Charles' muscular legs. He didn't bother to watch where he threw them he was so busy watching the gorgeous spread of skin before him. It was almost too much to process: the preciously faint tan lines far up Charles' legs and low down on his hips, the indents of muscles marked out in the paleness of the coiling hips, and his cock-that lovely fucking cock, beautifully uncut, engorged and leaking and begging to be swallowed, stroked, milked empty.

Before he could act on this desire, the man pushed himself up as well, folding his legs over Erik's thighs and dipping his fingers under his sweatshirt, making a muscle in his stomach convulse reflexively.

"Will you let me?" the Brit murmured, his voice soft and pleasantly pleading. Erik nodded and the man pushed the hem of his sweatshirt up slowly, as if teasing himself, or the both of them, with the gradual reveal.

"You're beautiful," he sighed, as if the fact awed him too much to speak normally. Erik grinned back at him, but he could feel himself blushing all the way down his throat.

"What's better than beautiful? I need an adjective for you, too, now," he replied just as softly, stroking Charles' bare thigh.

"You're the writer," Charles laughed, reaching up and running his fingers back through Erik's hair to the base of his neck. "I'm just a homely scientist."

Shaking his head disbelievingly, Erik moved his hand to the man's naked line of spine and pushed him back into the mattress, adding his weight nestled between two brackets of legs and leaning into a kiss, heart stuttering at the sensation of Charles' pulsing cock pinned smooth against his stomach.

Their arms bumped and tangled in the process of exploring each other's bodies. Erik's hands pressed solidly down the man's sheened torso, his hip, to the back of his thigh and his glorious ass, the slope of his hips leading him on like a rolling stone into the dip of his spine. Charles' skimmed down from his shoulders, down his ribs and over his hips, pushing impatiently and his sweatpants.

Erik got the hint but couldn't refuse one last heavy grind, eliciting a sighing groan from the man trapped beneath him, before slipping away and fighting his underwear and sweatpants completely off.

"Where are your condoms?" Charles rasped, watching him untangle himself as if it were something alluring instead of clumsy.

"Nightstand. The green tin."

Charles was rummaging before he even finished his sentence and Erik found his haste flattering, stroked the man's tight hips, his stomach, his cock, gratefully, kissing his shoulder for a moment before Charles turned back over, condom and a bottle of lube gripped slickly.

"Let me do it?" the man requested, using his knee to stroke the inside of Erik's thigh. He nodded, pushing Charles into the bedding and caressing his mottled throat, his shoulders and his chest as he moved to straddle the other man around the thighs.

"You've such a lovely fecking cock, Erik," Charles panted, voice somehow more British in his distraction. Erik's eyes slid shut as the man stroked him, lightly but confidently, just as if he'd been doing this with Erik for years and years. He grinned.

"Where's your camera now?" he teased, and remembered that he should be amazed that he was capable of teasing, of being aroused, of being anything but traumatized for life after last night. That had to mean something didn't it? That last night could fall from him like a bad dream had to mean that it couldn't be real.

He forgot it again in the face of Charles' pouting mouth and the sound of a condom wrapper tearing. "On the patio, where it does me absolutely no good," the brunet complained, but his face cleared again at Erik's shuddering intake of breath, a fortifying necessity of Charles' sweet, sure hands rolling the condom cleanly down his girth.

"You like that, don't you, Erik? You like my hands on you," Charles accused playfully, sprinkling lube over latex and stroking him with purpose.

"I do," Erik sighed, not bothering with coyness at a time like this. He leaned over to kiss Charles light and gentle, at the same time slipping the bottle of lube away from him and greasing up a few eager fingers.

He had already slipped off Charles to lie at his side, half-reaching between the man's weakly bent legs, before manners worked their way past the fog of lust obfuscating his mind.

"Is this okay?" he looked up to ask. Charles was looking back at him, eyes like deep pools, calm somewhere deep below the moment's turbulence.

"You mean hovering your hand over my genitals?" the Brit asked cheekily. "No, that's really not okay."

Erik tested his theory that the man's mouth tasted sweeter when it was teasing, leaning in and capturing those lips that gasped into him when he pressed his hand onto the man's cock, sliding down slowly to finally rest just barely massaging that puckered hole that would soon be his whole world.

More lube and more kissing and he was pressing slowly but surely inside, awed by how tight Charles was even around one finger. The man clutched his shoulder and tilted his head back to breathe out one long shaking breath, so exquisitely virginal that Erik's cock about cried out with want.

"Are you okay?" he panted.

The man closed those so-blue eyes for a moment, swallowing hard, before saying, "I didn't realize your fingers were so long."

Erik couldn't help but think that if the man was amazed with the length of a finger then maybe they'd never progress to the length of a cock, especially _his _cock. He pulled back, unsure, but Charles held his bicep, keeping him in place.

"Another, please," he sighed, writhing down onto Erik's digit and squeezing tighter than ever around him, scorching Erik's mouth suddenly dry with the act. Struggling to lick more moisture into his lips, he snatched the lube again and bit Charles' throat roughly, sucking away the ache, as he slid in another finger right along the first, feeling the man's moan vibrate through his lips and set him alight. He knew it was important to prep the man-he _knew _it-but at the same time he wanted inside him so impatiently and so intensely that it physically hurt.

Panting into the man's chest, he thrust in further through two fingers, sparing enough brain-cells to lust after the way the smaller man writhed beneath him, hands clutching him or the bedspread or whatever he could get a slick grip on. Erik twisted slightly, holding himself up on a free elbow and sliding his mouth over first one and then the other of the man's nipples, licking, lapping and biting as he scissored his fingers apart inside him, stretched them, torqued until with a lucky prod Charles jerked and cried out under him, scratching his shoulder and yanking at the bedcover violently.

"Another," the smaller man begged, reaching over to tug his hair demandingly before dropping it to his own slowly leaking erection. "I need more-please."

Erik shifted down further onto the bed to truly get some strength behind those fingers and added a third, one slow knuckle at a time.

It was difficult to keep the pace steady with Charles driving himself down onto the penetration-setting his own idea of what the pace should be, which was a bit rougher than anything Erik had envisioned for him. He wasn't sure of a way to stop the man from doing what he would, though, so Erik just tried to pull back when Charles drove down, attempting through sheer perseverance to stretch the man slowly and carefully rather than impatient and rough.

Charles yanked on his shoulder, whining morosely, nearly sobbing with the frustration of his shallow thrusts easing their way only gradually into fully-seated three fingers. Erik did feel bad, but more than that he didn't want to hurt the man, so he ignored Charles' begging and pleading as much as he was able to, balancing enough to stroke the man's burning cock to attempt to make up for it.

Once he was ensconced up to the last knuckle he thrust with vigor, own body thrumming with Charles' ecstatic cry and the sweet tight clench of that body. He alternated, pulling nearly out and then thrusting all the way back in, or keeping his digits perfectly deep and then pulsing them even deeper. Charles didn't seem discerning-he liked all of it, moaning, panting, arching, writhing. Erik's cock burned with the desire to be inside him, so acutely that Erik couldn't stand it any more.

He pulled away, rolling into the valley of the smaller man's taut legs. Charles didn't complain in the slightest, pulling his hips closer, dragging him down to kiss breathlessly, rocking himself up into Erik's weight, grinding them together in a way Erik had to put a stop to immediately or else risk stopping this party before it started. He escaped enough so they weren't touching, at least not at the points that could get him in trouble.

"Is it okay?" he panted into that kissed-slick mouth, sucking on the lower lip for a second, slipping his lubed hand over the man's abandoned manhood.

Charles swallowed painfully and rasped, "If you don't fuck me _right now_, I'm going to roll you over and do it myself."

Erik chuckled as much as his lack of breath would allow and massaged the inside of Charles' stretched thigh, feeling the surprisingly erotic tendon between groin and thigh, and, after yet another healthy daubing of lube, directed the globed head of his cock to that tightly puckered hole.

"Oh god," Charles whispered, shivering, eyes sliding closed. Erik leaned over and kissed his parted lips and pressed inside him.

Charles' body was such a vice around him that it seemed as if he'd never work a way further inside than that first inch. Erik was so sure of this fact that he shifted on his arms to pull back, positive that the Brit needed another round of fingering before he'd be able to manage anything past the head of him anytime soon.

But before he could follow through Charles tossed a defiant leg over his hips and held him in place.

"Just give me a minute," the man murmured, eyes closed as he rubbed Erik's shoulders distractedly. He was incredibly flushed, tendrils of it staining his collar and chest gorgeously.

Erik would have argued but at this point he was so far beyond anything outside the scope of fucking Charles senseless that he couldn't really work out what his mouth was supposed to say, and anyway, his body was already following the man's advice, settling back in, giving up on its counterintuitive impetus to pull away.

With a helping hand to feed himself slowly further along the hot path of the man, Erik could forge another inch of leeway, thrusting within the territory he'd won, gaining entrance one bare centimeter at a time but it added up and after a couple minutes he was shaking from head to toe with the glory of being pressed into the man until his short coarse hairs were crushed against his slick body.

Charles pushed up on his elbows, staring wide-eyed at the feat.

"It's so deep," he murmured as if he didn't realize he were speaking, and who knew? At this point maybe he didn't.

Erik changed his mind about this hypothesis, though, when Charles dropped back, staring in confusion at the ceiling, brows quirked expressively.

"I taste...colors?" he claimed and Erik shook with laughter as well as desire. Charles smiled back joyfully and pulled him in for a kiss, the man curling his tongue against his, sucking on it and then his lip.

Erik groaned into that talented mouth and shifted his hips back slightly, sliding them in again, thrilled that Charles was still tight but was no longer so tight as to be a hindrance. The man moaned into his mouth and Erik could swallow it down and taste it, sweeter with each building thrust.

Wanting to be closer, needing to be as close on the outside as he was on the inside, he maneuvered, slipping one arm under the man's thigh and about folding him in half, hitting that spot inside of him that made the man cry Erik's name-even through the expanse of air it seemed that he could feel the vibration of it through his skin and it caused his hips to jerk erratically for a moment before his sense of rhythm returned.

He moved his free arm behind Charles' shoulders, pulling the man in tightly to him even though neither of them had the breath necessary to manage kissing at the moment. Just having him wrapped so close was enough-one leg over his arm, the other spurring his hips on, both of the man's arms around his neck. He arched his back, coiling his way deeper into Charles and watching him moan with it.

Charles rolled his hips back onto Erik's driving shaft, forcing it deeper, harder, than Erik meant it to go, but he couldn't bear to stop enough to amend it. Instead he screwed his eyes shut as Charles' cock rubbed eagerly against his stomach, burning a clear streak of wetness across him. He dug his grip hard into the crease of Charles' thigh where it was bent against his body, dragging the hips in against him since the man seemed to like that so much. Sure enough, the brunet choked out a cry, bucking hard, mussing his hair and dragging him in for a desperate kiss they could hardly manage.

"Please, Erik," the man gasped, apparently unsure if he wanted to be grinding up against Erik's stomach or down onto his cock and so trying to do both at the same time it felt like. "Please, make me come."

Erik realized he wasn't sure how to manage that: with one hand gripped into Charles' thigh and the other slipping in the sweat on the back of the man's neck, that didn't leave a lot of left over appendages to jerk the man off with.

He wondered if he could fuck the man straight into orgasm and the image inflamed him so wholly that he took that as his new personal goal.

Getting a good grip on the nape of Charles' neck, he pulled back against the strain of the man's heel on his spine, slipped out and out and out and then slammed all the way back in.

Charles cried out loudly, jolting in his arms nearly clear out of the bed, falling back into a body that was less bone and more sinew, quivering and twisting under his weight as Erik pressed him into the mattress heavily and slid back to thrust all over again. He arched his back, close to painfully, to rub Charles' cock beneath his heft, but between that and the burn in his thighs and the over-tautness in his gripping fingers and shoulders, it was lost into the loop of converging pleasure and pain.

Moaning into the man's throat he drove harder and harder, shifting more weight back into his hips and snapping them mercilessly, basking in the shrill pealing cries of the man and his panting gasps, the scrape of his scrabbling nails-it all seemed to echo in his ears and his spine and his loins.

"Kiss me, kiss me," the man begged, voice thin and wavery, obviously on edge as Erik didn't so much thrust as dug himself into his body.

As much as he could manage it, Erik followed orders, pushing up and mashing their mouths together, too distracted for finesse. Charles seemed to breathe through him if either of them breathed at all, yanking at his hair and coming hard between them, cum hitting hot and wet against Erik's abs and making him gasp into Charles' mute, working mouth.

Everything of Charles' body went taut in his breathless orgasm, his legs gripping Erik's waist, his arms encircling his shoulders, and especially the slick entrance encasing his cock. Gasping, whining with the pleasurable pain of his own bone-melting orgasm, he wracked out choking breaths of Charles' sweet name and buried himself deep within the other man, orgasm hitting him in wave after wave, crashing over him and whiting him out and breaking him down into a wet, near-sobbing mess collapsed over the brunet.

When his mind came back to him however many minutes later, he realized he was collapsed with the brunt of his weight stifling the smaller man, and pulled away as gently as he could. Charles still grunted softly, either with pain or bereavement, when he pulled out completely, only mostly limp.

It was too much to ask of his muscles to hold him up. He got rid of his condom and immediately collapsed over, giving Charles room to breathe as the man panted and groaned beside him, rubbing his sore ribs with a laugh. When he'd recovered enough, he followed, inserting himself into Erik's arms. It was too hot, and awkwardly damp, but Erik found he didn't mind at all, and pulled Charles even closer. The last thing he remembered was Charles panting into his chest, maybe murmuring something, and then he was asleep again.

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**(This is somebody else's art although I don't know whose. It is gorgeous and hot and NSFW though, so take a look when you have a minute, and let me know if you recognize the artist so I can give them better reference than this! . /tumblr_m1mbgxMBO91rpncqno1_ ****)**


	21. Chapter 20

Somewhere nearby the _X-Files _theme song started blasting but Erik was just going to bury his head under the pillows and ignore it-until Charles ripped himself away from his side and started scrabbling for it, leaving a long line of freezing cold air against his cozy skin.

Groaning at being forced awake, Erik pulled the blankets securely around him, curling up on his side and glaring at Charles on the phone. It was too energetic to keep up for long and gave up quickly, rubbing his gritty eyes, scrubbing at his aching skull, feeling hungover all over again. They should not have done it twice back to back, he saw it now. It had been too much too soon, leaving him not thrumming with post-coital bliss like the first time but filled with bone-aching exhaustion, like a bad cold, like running a marathon. He now knew what people meant by too much of a good thing. It was apparently the same with too much of a perfect thing.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry!" Charles was groaning into the phone, pulling at his hair in distress. "I know—I…I overslept. I know! Just let me…um…let me get a quick shower and I'll be right over there, okay, I swear. With…breakfast! To make it up to you all…Give the team my love. See you soon."

He hung up then, slamming his phone onto the mattress angrily.

"Fuck! I'm so fecking late," Charles complained, stomping and asking in a rush: "Can I borrow your shower?"

"I have to take a shower, too," Erik whined back, furrowing his brows into his pillow.

Charles grinned cheekily, walking backwards with decided flirtation.

"Well, come on then—I like sharing."

* * *

"You cannot possibly be up for shower sex," Charles accused, pulling out of Erik's hands under the hot flow of water, scrubbing his hair and sweat-stained skin emphatically.

It was true—one more orgasm might kill him—but Erik still felt upset at being accused like this.

"Well why the hell did you invite me for a joint shower then?"

"Because it's faster!" Charles claimed, grabbing Erik's shampoo and also Erik, scrubbing him down as well, as if he'd dillydally if he did it himself. "Every second counts. The team's already setting up without me. I didn't even have Raven's film set out, she had to go around scrounging for it all herself. She has to be at the school at nine and Hank's going to have to take off research to bring her. I could just die! I _never_ slack off like this!"

"You weren't slacking off," Erik assured, grabbing the brunet and helping to rinse his hair in retaliation. The locks were strangely erotic, slippery and slick in his fingers. Surely one more little orgasm wouldn't hurt him… "You were working _very_ hard."

"I know it," Charles pouted, but he purred slightly through it. Erik would have considered it an invitation but for the way Charles pushed him away decisively. "I'm going to be sore for weeks thanks to you. Come on, _please_, stop fannying around."

"What?"

"_Get a bleeding move on_."

But how could he get a move on with Charles so gorgeous and wet and naked? Pouting and purring and practically begging him, even though not for what he wanted to give… The bruises he'd left on the man stood out all the more clearly, all along his pale column of throat, spattered across his collarbones, on his chest, on his hip just beside the gently curving bone. The contrast of pale skin and dark hair lit his eyes up even brighter than usual, stained his lips and freckles a darker hue. Charles should be in the shower all the time. This was a work of art. How could the man expect him to rush through this?

"Not you," Charles growled as he jumped out of the shower, shoving a hand into Erik's chest to keep him from following. "You need a minute." And he turned the water straight to freezing.

Erik escaped with a wounded yelp, soaking his bath mat, shivering as he grabbed for his biggest fluffy robe and a soft towel. Charles did nothing but a perfunctory drying job, hair still dripping as he rushed to the closet. Erik thought about taking the towel to him himself but he worried he'd lose a hand to the task. Charles had been scary enough yesterday when upset and it was already apparent that sex had not softened the man up any.

"Can I borrow some clothes? Mine are all muddy from yesterday."

Grumbling, Erik turned off the icy shower and followed Charles' hyperactive lead. The man was already tugging on a pair of his old ragged jeans over his black boxer briefs. Erik's cock immediately twitched with interest, regardless of cold water or how much Charles seemed disinclined to deal with his arousal.

"Don't you have _any_ slacks that aren't a 22 waistband?" Charles complained, ignorant to his state.

"I'm a 30, and no," he growled back. "You're lucky you found those. I thought I'd thrown them out."

"I suppose all your dress shirts are equally middling," Charles huffed, scanning his closet. Erik thought he probably did have a dress shirt that would fit—he was broader than Charles across the shoulders, although Charles' chest seemed more expansive than his own. But he didn't mention this. The thought of Charles so scruffy and childish in his overlong jeans, maybe an old T-shirt, gaping at the collar, a jacket or sweater hanging over his knuckles—it was all so endearing and _tempting_ that Erik was taken aback for a moment.

He'd never been interested in the endearment factor of another man before. Men were for sex, not for dress up. He'd never thought about dressing them in his clothes, about their body in his shirts or his jeans caressing their skin…

"I'll find you something to wear," his croaked excitedly, running his hands over Charles' hips through his own jeans. The man pulled away quickly.

"Do you know what 'late' means?" Charles growled. "My team is setting up without me. We are behind schedule. We do not have the rest of our lives to get this house examined. Now is decisively not the time." He grabbed his phone and escaped down the stairs grumbling to himself, apparently hoping Erik would be able to focus better without him there to lust over.

It didn't fully work, only because Erik no longer needed Charles immediately at hand to lust over him. Charles had a life all his own inside Erik's mind and he lived there with just as much vibrancy and clarity as in reality, a new development at once startling and exciting.

Today was a new day, but it felt like a whole new lifetime. Stretched before him was something pale and luminous, and stretched back behind him was a path winding and umbral. What had changed to create this light? Was it simply sleeping with Charles? Surely that couldn't be it. He had slept with men before, men who were good at it, too, after all. Although they didn't have that laughing passion, the playful intensity that Charles had, that distinctive taste equal parts seduction and cordiality. Was that all he'd been waiting for?

His mind shied away from the temptation of that answer as he dressed himself in his usual suit and tie, snatching a shirt and hoodie for Charles. Instead, he found himself thinking of his mother.

He remembered the weight of her embrace, the soothing warmth of it from his childhood. He remembered the scrape of her nails on his scalp, her fingers combing his hair. Then the soft sibilant whisper of _his_ words soothing him.

Her jerked up suddenly, listening to the man downstairs on the phone—his soft, exact accent, his low, vibrating tone that shivered over Erik's skin even at this distance.

Was that what it was? No one had taken care of him since his mother's death, not even his father—nothing beyond a roof over his head and food on the table. Was this what he'd been waiting for without even knowing it? Someone to put their hands in his hair and whisper soothingly to him in the night, someone to hold him tightly and warm him…

The thought galled, and Erik found himself flushing hotly with the embarrassment of it as he buttoned his shirt. He was a grown man. He'd been taking care of himself since he was fifteen. He didn't need someone to hide himself in or cast responsibility onto.

…But he had needed it last night. And Charles, through whatever miracle of serendipity, had been both close at hand and intensely capable of taking it on. The smaller man, with his flirtatious flippancy, his wild breathless ease, had revealed something of himself last night even as Erik had been revealed. There was something inside Charles Erik had hardly suspected at first: something hard and steady on which to build a foundation, should Erik choose to build it, should Charles allow him to.

"Who are you talking to?" he questioned, pulling on his jacket and tromping downstairs where Charles was exiting the hall that led to some smaller rooms.

Charles was already hanging up, shaking his head and splattering cold water from his hair as he did so.

"It was Miss Frost actually," he said with a dazed look as if he didn't realize the woman had his number. "She was having a hard time getting a hold of you and decided to call me. She sounded very smug to find we were together—I don't know why. It was a given we were going to be sleeping together—staying together! In the house! I mean..." he gave up all at once, blushing all the way down his chest and snatching the clothes out of Erik's hand. "Are you ready yet?"

"I didn't hear my phone go off." Had it died again?

"I don't see how you would have, it being at the house and all. Speaking of which:" Charles dug in his jeans pocket and handed Erik his mini notebook and pen.

"Where'd you get these from?"

"From your trousers before I put them to wash with mine. Really, you didn't notice they weren't still on the floor where you left them? Or do clothes magically wash themselves at your pad, in which case I'll have to investigate further."

Erik rolled his eyes and held his hand out for the rest of his loot. Charles just blinked at him owlishly and then reached out as well to hold his hand. Shaking him loose, he growled, "No, my necklace."

"I haven't got your necklace.

"It was in my pants pocket."

"It wasn't."

"I put it right in the side pocket."

"I checked all the pockets, I assure you. It must have fallen out in our…_tussle_. I'll bring it back for you," Charles assured, yanking the old V-neck over his head. The dark gray-purple brought out the bruises on his throat marvelously, just like Erik had thought, but he put that to the side in order to be completely confused by what Charles had said.

"What are you talking about? I'll just grab it when I interview the team."

Charles stopped with one arm in his hoodie, staring abjectly.

"Wha?"

"I said—"

"No, I know what you said but…you don't mean at the house, surely. Not when you can just interview them afterwards at the motel."

"Well I could have interviewed you _all_ at the motel afterwards. Anyone can do that. That's not really what Emma had in mind."

"Well maybe she didn't, but things change. She wouldn't ask you to go back there if she knew what had happened to you yesterday."

_Yes, she absolutely would, _Erik thought but still blushed deeply, face burning with it.

He'd let things get out of hand yesterday, and now Charles thought he couldn't do his job. Just when he was thinking the highest of Charles the man was apparently thinking the worst of him: weak, hysterical, babyish. And all over something so very stupid. Today the exact memory was hazy, was wrapped in thick black gauze that made it hard to discern exactly what had to leave him with such a reckoning. All that remained was the muscle memory—the pounding of his heart against his ribs, the rush of adrenaline through his veins. It was if there were a well inside him into which he'd shoved last night's terrors, making them dark and murky. Every now and then those gimlet eyes flashed to the surface, a chalky charcoal arm, a gasping smoky breath—but then they slipped back below the water and Erik wasn't forced to see them, acknowledge them any longer.

He knew memories like that, indistinct, obscure thoughts, turgid and tasteless. He'd have to throw that pot out. It was obviously no good—worse than no good, was downright harmful. He'd had no idea that ancient hash could be so destructive, so terrifyingly harmful, or he'd have never done it. Sure it had given him new insight into Charles, but it had also given Charles false insight into him, turning him into someone that had to be coddled and worked around—someone unprofessional and weak-minded.

"Who are you, my babysitter? Don't worry about me."

"Don't worry about you?" Charles repeated, flushing brightly, and when he came to he was passionate with wrath. "Fine! Excuse me for thinking that your emotional breakdown last night was something to worry about. Obviously we're ignoring you screaming hysterically in a bathroo—"

Erik sidled forward and wrapped his hand over Charles' mouth, pressing him into the wall gently with the length of his body, grinning when Charles groaned softly into his palm.

"Hush, now, professor, before you break something."

Charles glared at him, but it seemed as much amorous as it was acrimonious. He slowly peeled Erik's hand off his face, arching slightly into his weight, as if he couldn't help it.

"Erik, think about this," the man demanded, getting enough space to plant his feet firmly, scruffy jean cuffs flopping halfway over his soles. "I'm sure you've got a great job, but is it really worth putting yourself through that again?"

Erik paused and made a show of really considering it even though he'd already decided. Emma wouldn't fire him for quitting this thing, though she would think less of him for it. He could get away with throwing this job to the wolves, or at least to Janos. What he couldn't get away with, he'd decided, was to throw Charles aside likewise. He wasn't sure where this was going, but he knew it was promising, knew he wanted to stay on this ride as long as long as Charles let him. He knew that if he explained it all Charles wouldn't be so against the idea of him going back to the house—if he understood it was all just a drugged out fluke it would save him anxiety. But it would lose Erik something more than that. He was too old for this to be cute. A man his age hiding behind his car to toke up at work was only precocious in a Judd Apatow movie. No one in real life looked at that (and that hysteria that it eventually resulted in) and thought "Oh yeah, that's totally worth coming back to this shit town for".

So Erik kept his mouth shut.

"You've exhausted your limit on worrying about me. Now get in the car before I leave you behind."


	22. Chapter 21

Erik dropped into the driver's seat and was immediately hugging the steering wheel with a yelp. He flailed at the chair control before he could shove it backwards and breathe fully, rubbing his bruised sternum.

"What the hell!" he gasped, coughing. "…Did you…did you drive last night?"

Charles stared at him so curiously from the passenger's seat, phone to his ear, so Erik knew the answer, but the man nodded anyways before whoever he was calling answered.

"Darwin!" he exclaimed eagerly as Erik backed the car out of the drive. "Yes, we're just leaving now. Did someone already bring Raven to the high school?" Erik had nothing better to do, so when he got them onto the main road, he reached over and started running his palm over Charles' thigh. The man pushed his hand away, glaring at him slightly, and went back to his phone conversation. Jerk. Surely he could get molested and talk at the same time. If anyone were capable of it had been sure it would be Charles. _"Az_ took her? What's Az doing here? Darwin, _what the hell_, why did you let him come?! She's not going to get any work done! Is he with her right now?"

The man dropped his face into one palm and then grabbed his slick hair.

"I _know_ he's a grown man, but…No, not _stop_ him but talk him out of it, yes! …_No_! Darwin you know I adore Azazel, that's not what I'm saying—I'd rather _neither_ of them come along! But if she _is_ going to come _to do work_ then I'd prefer she come _alone_ so she can actually get the work done! Now you've left them alone at the school together, unsupervised, when you know we've got so much to catch up on and can't afford any more delays."

The man's face lit up bright red at something said on the other end and Erik glanced nervously as he took a right towards the strip mall.

"_That is different and you know it, Armando!"_ the man hissed, glancing back at Erik. "Listen, I did not call you to discuss this! Now tell me what the house is doing. Did you get my data from last yesterday? What's happened so far?"

Erik tuned out then, trying once more to reach Charles' inseam, but he was rebuffed with a _painful_ squeeze to his hand so he let it drop. He'd get some sugar into the man, he thought as he struggled to ignore Charles' hissings of "That can't be right. No, Darwin, that cannot be right". That should do the trick. If anyone was likely to freak out on low blood sugar, surely it would be Charles. That had to be what this was—no breakfast, a breakneck pace, and Darwin apparently giving him a hard time for dropping the ball. Erik refused to let himself think it could be anything else.

They'd had a nice time together. Charles wasn't holding last night against him, apparently, or why would he sleep with him? Twice. And both times had been phenomenal, if exhausting. Charles had enjoyed himself; he couldn't deny that.

Playing back all the little details that _proved_ Charles had enjoyed himself, Erik grinned and relaxed in his seat, peaceful enough to accidentally overhear what he was trying to ignore.

"Darwin, there must be! A man like him doesn't break down into hysterical sobbing over _nothing_!"

"Hey!" Erik yelped angrily, car swerving as he nearly missed the turn off to the parking lot.

Charles looked up and the giant inflatable donut outside the door seemed to reflect in his eyes.

"Darwin—I'll have to call you back," he whispered, and hung up immediately, hand reaching out and grabbing Erik's where it was putting them into park.

"Don't tell people about that!" Erik growled. Charles didn't seem to hear him.

"Have I died and gone to heaven?"

"Better than that," he sighed, finding it impossible not to smile slightly at Charles' awestruck demeanor. "Fred's Freedom Donuts."

"I love you," Charles gasped, squeezing his hand, ignorant of Erik's sudden burning blush. "I love Fred. I love freedom."

And then the man was leaping out of the car like a five year old at Disney World, and Erik, the inexperienced parent, was racing to keep up, snatching his wallet out of the glove compartment, legs tingling slightly.

_He was just joking!_

Charles stood in the tiled entryway, sweeping air towards himself and breathing as deeply as possible. The place was mostly empty luckily: just a mom and her unisex toddler, covered in chocolate, at a table in the corner, and the girl behind the counter. Erik recognized her from as a teen who'd job shadowed with Emma for a couple days last summer, Gwen Somethingorother. She stared at Charles with wide blue eyes, chewing on the end of her white-blonde pony-tail.

"Can I live here, please?" Charles requested, eyes closed rapturously. He opened them quickly though to drop on his knees in front of the luminous donut-window, threatening to drool all over the glass.

"I can put my bed right here."

"We won't have room to replay this morning," Erik sniggered at him and Charles looked up at him from the display case with huge, almost shining eyes. But there was something in them, something sunk deep in their waters that made Erik's spine shiver.

Luckily they looked away as Charles' phone went off in his pocket.

"_Nevermore! Nevermore!_" it croaked loudly, making them both jump.

Charles fumbled with his oversized pockets, hopping up.

"Fuck! And here's me reeking of a fucking pastry shop! She'll flay me!" Shoving his wallet at Erik, he sprinted from the building. "Get one of everything!" But he ran back, pointing at the Danish Donuts. "Get two of those. Three. Get three of those."

And he was gone, nearly knocking into the inflatable donut, distracted by his phone.

"Ain't that the…?" Gwen questioned, pointing rudely.

"Yes."

"Dijou do that ter his neck?"

Erik turned and glared at her.

"One of everything. Three of those. And a Venti drip coffee."

Erik had no idea of using Charles' money, but he flipped through the man's wallet anyway.

There was a hundred dollar bill and some ill-used twenties, a receipt for Starbucks with something scribbled on the back that Erik couldn't make out. There were various credit cards and no less than _three_ library cards: Westchester, New York and _London._ In another pocket was a school ID for Oxford University in which Erik almost didn't recognize the other man.

Charles looked very young, with short, tidy hair, which wasn't so unrecognizable, but his expression certainly was. There was something inexpressibly sad that cast a pall over the photo, that made Charles' bright vibrant eyes look clouded and doleful, his full red mouth thin and down-turned, his cheeks sallow and sunken, everything about it closed off, distrustful, awaiting a fresh blow.

Erik slammed the wallet shut, remembering to breathe, struggling for breath through a tightly, clenched chest. He realized Gwen was staring at him.

"I said: leave room fer cream?" she repeated, chewing on her hair.

"What? No…no that's fine."

Outside, Charles was huddled up against the wall between Fred's and the Subway, hissing something into his phone about how it wasn't the same thing at all and _why_ couldn't _anyone_ understand that? Turning to knock his head back against the concrete, Charles caught him laden with donuts and went weak at the knees. "Erik just got back with…with breakfast. I'm on my way now. Please have something worthwhile for me to bring to Darwin."

He hung up and immediately grabbed for the bag of donuts, struggling to drag them to the car against Erik's grip.

"Hey, some of those are for me, too, _Francis._"

Stopping dead in his tracks, Charles glared at him and yanked his wallet out of Erik's pocket.

"You nosy cad; why don't Jews have embarrassing middle names?"

"Because God _likes_ us."

* * *

Charles didn't so much as eat his donut as inhale it, as if eating it as quickly as possible would get them there any faster.

"What was Raven complaining about?" he questioned.

"Hmm?" Charles grunted around glazed sugar. "Oh…nothing. She finds it amusing to accuse me of being hypocritical, just because I'd like her to get _some_ work done on her work holiday."

"Why don't you just threaten to fire her? Isn't that how one normally gets underlings to work?"

"_Ha_! Underlings, overlings; you're an absolute riot. This may surprise you, Mr. Lensherr, but we're not in this for the money. Discovery Channel recompenses us for the filming, but these preliminary missions are pure volunteerism. Raven takes that very much to heart."

"Why does she even come then if not to help with the ghost hunting?"

"_Paranormal investigation._ And I gather she sees it more as an excuse for a vacation than anything scientifically relevant. I'm surprised she bothers helping with the research at all, other than that she doesn't much like to feel left out of things—even if they are things she has no interest in."

Erik was about to ask why Charles should care about the grabby woman's feelings enough to care if she felt left out or not, but before he could, Charles was already interrupting him.

"Don't you have cologne or something?" the man mumbled, digging through the glove compartment with one hand and licking his sticky fingers clean on the other.

"At home," said Erik, using a napkin himself as he coasted into the visitor parking at the high school, tossing back enough caffeine to get him through the next couple hours.

Charles snatched the cup out of his hand, gulping a few mouthfuls before breaking off with a grimace.

"God that's awful. Is there no sugar in it at all? Ugh. Wait here. I'll be right back."

"Yeah right," Erik muttered, and got out of the car as well. His H2 was still at the house but he did have his notes—it was old school but enough to interview Raven. He didn't know who Azazel was, other than an unfortunately named boyfriend, but if he had a role in the show then he'd interview him as well. If not then they'd be on the road a lot faster…maybe he'd interview Azazel regardless.

"Do I smell like a bakery?" Charles worried on the sidewalk, straightening his T-shirt and hoodie as if it were an expensive suit that should hang a certain impeccable way.

Erik wrapped a swift arm around his waist and dragged him close, nearly off his feet, burying his face in the man's throat and inhaling deeply.

Charles groaned deep in his chest, a noise that went straight to Erik's exhausted cock and when he smiled he made sure his teeth caught on the soft mottled skin of Charles' neck.

"Yes."

Charles pushed him away but the move was halfhearted, undermined by the way Charles' body swayed back against him like a stuttering pendulum. The man tried again, more successfully.

"We should—" he struggled to say but couldn't finish the thought, simply turning and wavering on weak legs into the school. Erik smiled hugely and followed.

By time they checked in at the front desk, Charles was more capable of speech.

"I won't pretend I know what I'm doing here. I don't. I never expected you to want to…for you…for us to…work together, after…after—What I mean is, I _do_ know we have to keep this professional."

"This from the guy who propositioned me on his motel doorstep!"

Charles stopped in the empty hallway to argue, and Erik saw he was in earnest—his mouth serious and drawn, his eyes somber and intent.

"That was different, Erik. We were _alone_. We're not alone now and we have to act accordingly."

Erik checked the hallway to make sure and then slipped closer, possessive hand on Charles' waist.

"We're alone right now."

Charles seemed at a loss for words again, watching Erik's mouth carefully, as if he'd very much like to kiss him, and Erik very much wished he would—but in the next moment the man had turned away again, shaking his head as they walked to the photography building.

"Was this your school?" Charles asked when he could manage it.

"Yes. They even have a picture of me still up here. In the trophy case."

"Let me guess," Charles teased, eyes light and playful again. "Chess club?"

Erik blushed because Charles was wrong without being completely wrong. Erik _had_ been in the chess club when he was in high school—had actually _founded_ the chess club to be more honest—but he'd never won any awards for it since they never had enough kids to form a local league.

"Soccer, actually," he growled back, not mentioning the chess thing, not right then at least.

Charles stared at him abjectly, nearly tripping on his oversized Keds.

"You played football?"

"Since I was eleven," Erik grinned back. "I gave it up when some overeager Sweeper slidetackled my tibia in half."

"Graphic, darling," Charles winced. "A tad graphic."


	23. Chapter 22

A/N: Sorry this took so long to upload guys! We're getting to the heavily edited portions of the original text, and so I've basically rewritten the next ten chapters or so and rewriting is taking FOREVERRRR. It doesn't help that I'm writing Asleep right now as well, so the two are competing for my time. But Asleep only has one chapter left, so hopefully I'll have more time then! For now, keep in mind that this was quickly written, barely edited, and therefore I'm positive there must be more than one mistake in here-hopefully it's not too huge! Enjoy, bear with me, and remember that I love each and every one of you for reading my stories at all despite my awfulness!

* * *

Charles had one hand on the door handle but didn't turn it, just stood there and took deep breaths.

"This is the blonde in the show, right? Not the demon under the floorboards?"

Charles just gave him a petulant glare and jerked the door open.

"The prodigal son returns!" a woman's voice called out immediately and Erik followed it in, already damning himself for teasing Charles into opening the door. Until then it had just been the two of them, in a perfect bubble where they could flirt and joke and fuck. Already that morning the outside world had been encroaching close, sidling up to their borders. Why had he encouraged the man to throw open their doors and invite in their invaders?

"Hello, darling," Charles drawled back. "I see you remain hard at work."

The room was free of students, with their empty and austere rows of desks in perfect ninety-degree order, so that Erik knew Aben-Arens was still the photography professor. She wasn't around though. Instead, at her immaculate and Spartan desk, a blond woman was sitting with her feet propped up on the knees of the man sitting in the wooden rolling chair. Erik recognized her automatically, her pale blue eyes and her wavy blonde hair, her full rosy face and quirking smirk. He _didn't_ recognize the man with her, sitting there with ice-chip eyes and long straight black hair pulled back into ponytail, facial hair that Erik immediately disliked. Must be the boyfriend. Erik felt the immediate urge to dislike him—because of his dumb goatee and because Charles hadn't wanted him there and because he had no use for him—but those eyes seemed to bore straight into him and stop some mechanism necessary to make any determination, one way or the other, about him. He kept to looking at Charles instead, trying to bite down on his shiver.

"Hey," the woman—Raven, that was right— huffed, pointing at Charles menacingly with a serious finger. "You're my brother, not my boss."

Charles' face flushed immediately and Erik couldn't tell if she was serious or if her joking was what making his face darken up.

"I'm not bossing—" he spluttered but she broke him off, jumping down from the desk and stalking closer, squinting at him curiously. The eerie man followed close behind.

"What the hell happened to your neck? It looks like you were mauled by a sucker fish."

Charles' jaw tightened but he neither flinched nor glanced at Erik, so that he felt bad for doing both. Hopefully Raven wasn't looking at him.

"That's exactly what happened, I'm sure," Charles drawled. "Now do you have my photos or not? I'm in a rush."

"Too rushed for introductions? How rude of you," she teased, eyes glinting just like how Charles' did. There was something about the color of blue, though, that made it feel icier, not as warm as Charles'. Charles' glint seemed mysterious, mischievous—Raven's seemed cunning, sinister. He liked her immediately for it, but coveted her less. The way people felt more respect for tigers but when picking a pet seemed to see the merits more of cats.

"Erik, this is my sister, Raven, and her boyfriend, Azazel," Charles sighed quickly. "Raven, Azazel, this is Erik Lensherr. He's the reporter from the ADN that's shadowing our investigation."

"If reporters like you got assigned to us in every city I'd almost see the point of this ghost-hunting business," Raven grinned at him, raking her eyes over his frame.

"Paranormal research," he muttered in correction, and moved imperceptibly a little behind Charles. But he got the feeling that Azazel, with the glass-blue eyes, perceived it.

Charles couldn't help but throw him some alms, even in front of his sister, and he was rewarded for his loyalty with a quick smile. Azazel caught that as well, although Charles didn't seem to notice, or maybe care.

"If you're quite finished," Charles suggested, returning back to his sparring match. "I need those photos."

"You take this stuff too seriously," Raven yawned, and dragged her feet back to the desk, sweeping up a thin folder. Charles started forward joyfully, leaving Erik to stay or follow as he would. He followed, even though it meant passing Azazel's deep-seeing eyes.

Before Charles could get his hands on the folder, Raven yanked it away again, staring at him.

"Why are you limping?"

Charles refused to react, but she caught Erik off guard so he couldn't help _his_ accidental flinch—_Was Charles limping? Had he hurt Charles? He hadn't noticed. He never should have let the man seduce him into doing it twice in a row._

"Oh my god," Raven hissed, staring at Erik anew. "What in the depths of hell are you packing down there?"

In the time it took his face to light up red, Charles was already coming to his rescue, throwing an arm before his hips to stave off Raven's lascivious gaze.

"Leave Magnus alone!" he growled, raising his voice for the first time with her. Raven was shocked, and so was Erik, but not because of any snarling. He was horrified that Charles had somehow forgotten his name. But before the fear could take hold all the way in his bones Charles was already turning to him, eyes shining, smile sheepishly endearing and any nervousness was struck from his mind.

"I named it Magnus," Charles murmured to him as privately as he could. "I hope that's all right. Then, if we were feeling familiar, I could call it Mags."

He tried his hardest, but he just couldn't keep himself from beaming back at the other man—it was everything he could do to not reach out and put his arm around his waist, pull him closer, smell _his_ soap and shampoo on Charles and whisper right into his ear that he could call it whatever the fuck he wanted to so long as he stuck around to call it _something_.

Raven watched them, watched him, and seemed to make a decision. She handed Charles the photo folder and then sat back and waited.

It didn't take long, as Charles ripped open the photos eagerly, and immediately whined.

"Raven! Where are the rest? This is barely a full roll!"

"I've got more finishing up in the photo lab," she admitted, jerking her head to a black metal door in the back wall. "Did you want them?"

"Sister dear," Charles growled sweetly, knuckles white on the meager stack of papers. "You know that I do!"

"Okay," the woman nodded. Then smiled at Erik. "You can help me."

Stiffening beside him, Charles quickly forbade it: "No."

"He's a reporter, isn't he?" Raven questioned. "He's supposed to get an idea for what we do here. This is what I do here. Why shouldn't he get a glimpse behind the scenes?"

"She's right," said Erik, grinning.

"Erik!"

"What? Why shouldn't I?"

Charles obviously had some reason why he shouldn't, but if his anxious glancing at his sister were any indication, it wasn't one he could admit to in front of her. Seething with frustration, he turned to Raven.

"Would you stop it? I haven't time for this."

"Why?" she demanded. "I'm your sister aren't I? I've got a perfect right to."

Turning away, Charles took out his cell-phone, immediately losing all interest.

"You'll do what you want," he intoned, and didn't give her another glance, didn't recognize or respond to the venomous glare she was shooting him.

"Come along, Erik dear," she growled, yanking him towards the dark room. "You're all mine."

Charles didn't contradict her, and he found himself wishing he hadn't thwarted the man either if this was what it got him, Charles didn't look up from his phone as he was dragged away by Raven, stronger than she looked. Azazel smiled at him as he left.

* * *

The dark room was, well, _dark, _which Erik had of course been expecting. But he hadn't expected his own reaction to it. As soon has he was through the door his breath seemed to seize in his chest and he stumbled, falling behind Raven as she stalked quickly inside. Erik had never taken photography, but he had worked for the student paper which was managed by Aben-Arens, and he had once gone down on a bi-curious aspiring photo-journalist back here. It hadn't seemed so eerie then, the red overhead lighting bathing everything in blood.

There were the cutting tables on the left, built into the wall, and the metal chemical table jutting into the middle of the room that could be worked on either side, photos hanging above it to dry. Raven went there now, tapping the dangling pages to check their dampness, maybe. Erik pressed his back against the wall so he could stop feeling as if someone were standing just behind him, and took his notebook out of his pocket. His palms were sweating and he wiped them on his slacks.

"So Charles is your brother," he murmured, pulling at his stifling collar. "Is he the reason you got into this ghost-hunting? You don't seem to give it much stock on its own account."

" 'Ghost-hunting' it is now, hm?" she sniggered back at him. "You weren't calling it that in front of my brother."

Erik was happy that it was too dark in here to show his blush.

"How long have you been tagging along after Charles?" he barbed.

"How long have _you_?"

"The show's done two full seasons and you've been there from episode one—that seems a bit odd if you've no interest in this stuff. Everyone else on the show's believer enough."

"Oh my," Raven laughed finally. "We're not getting far, are we? Okay, I'll bend first, since you've already shown me you're a stubborn prick and Character Study was on my checklist."

She turned to him, leaning with her hip against the table. The light lit her up from behind, giving her a bright red halo.

"I've never believed in this ghost shit, although it's all my fault Charles got into it as a kid. Too many ghost stories trying to scare each other, you know? It's a case of over-active imagination turning into life-long delusion. If only I had a time machine. There's no stopping it now, though, god knows. And anyway, at least it gets him out of the house and socializing, meeting exciting people like you, so I let him have his fun."

Erik bristled at the intimation that Raven _let _Charles do anything. He was a grown man, capable of eating pizza and fucking journalists and wasting his life as he saw fit. Raven continued before he could snarl as much.

"Now that I've answered your question, I've got one myself," she informed, eyes glinting even in the dark. "You've got your taste of him. What now?"

Shifting uncomfortably, Erik feigned ignorance. "What do you mean?"

"Come on," Raven wheedled. "I gave you much better than that. You know what I mean. You don't have to worry. I don't care either way—it would actually be a hellova lot easier if you were the hit-em and quit-em type, so don't feel embarrassed. I just need to know: are you content with screwing him or are you attempting to date him?"

_Date him._

Of course.

Erik didn't smile, refused to, but he felt as if his _urge_ to smile filled him so completely that it was just as obvious. _Date him. _That was surely the answer he'd been scrounging for all morning, only it was so foreign to him that he hadn't been able to hit on it right away. It made perfect sense. He wanted Charles, wanted his body, yes, that was the most obvious, the one he had the most experience with—but more than that, he wanted his quick retorts, his mischievous glances, his playful smiles and his company. He wanted these things so much that a day, a week, wasn't enough to sate him, and to get his fill he'd need months, years even, and when you wanted someone around in that way and for that amount of time you were supposed to date them to get it. It was a social contract, a mutual understanding that gave two people a right to each other, a right to not just sex but _more _than sex.

It was understandable that Erik hadn't thought of it earlier. It wasn't a problem he was used to getting himself into. Usually he met a guy, he thought it'd be fun to sleep together, they slept together, and then Erik drove back home. Every now and then he'd find someone good enough or intriguing enough in bed to think "I should do that again with them" in which case he'd get their number and they'd do it again, maybe even a few times. But not one of those times had he suddenly thought, "I wonder what this guy thinks about horror movies? I wonder what he looks like reading _Jane Eyre _in the morning before he's ready to get out of bed. I wonder what his favorite dessert is and what his reaction would be if I were to get it for him right this very second." He should have known, he probably should have at least _surmised _that when you started to wonder those things about someone you turned away from hitting him up on a random drunken Friday night and thought seriously about calling this guy after work, driving up to his place for the weekend, planning their holidays around each other.

He realized Raven was still waiting for a response, and then realized that he'd forgotten what, exactly, she had asked him.

"What?" he asked, wishing his voice hadn't come out half so dreamy.

"Oh, I know," she laughed, conspiratorially, misunderstanding his long silence. "It's a tough one. I mean, on the one hand he's such a _flirt _and god do guys dig that. You're not the first to be taken in by it. But the morning after guys tend to remember that 'good in bed' is not the sole requirement for a boyfriend. With the ghost shit, and that's only the biggest, and then the cardigans and the book clubs and the _chess_! _Dear god_, the chess! How many times have I tried to explain to him that men do not date men who literally, seriously and _for fun _play chess! He's almost certifiably dorky. I understand if you're looking for a way to throw in the towel without getting into a professional snafu. Trust me, we're not going to turn this into a bigger deal that it actually is. I just need to know."

Erik just stared at her for a second in the dark, wondering seriously if she might be brain damaged, or at least very severely psychotic.

Charles? Certifiably _dorky? _All the adjectives in the world to describe him and she picked _dorky? _While clever, irreverent, charming, beautiful, witty and sexy as all hell were still in existence? In his mind's eye he saw Charles, smile flashing, eyes glinting, the way his hips swayed when he walked, the way his mouth wrapped lovingly around every vowel, the way his mouth wrapped around something else…

No, dorky was not the right word for him. But Raven was obviously not worth arguing this with if she couldn't see it already after knowing him so many years.

"Why the hell do you care?" he growled. "Why are you even asking me this?"

Sighing, Raven turned and looked over her photos again, and then went to the cutting table and took up a single sheaf.

"Charles…he isn't the best at these things. I'll blame it on his complete lack of understanding of real human beings. And what he doesn't know often gets him into trouble. He's just too easy to dupe, you know? And life seems keen on teaching him harsh lessons about misplaced trust." With this she tossed the paper on the table towards him. He stopped it from sliding off with one finger, stepping from the wall and immediately shivering at the cold air on his back.

The photo was black and white, and Erik realized from the angle it was taken from one of the upstairs windows at the Gone-Away House, as a view of the drive way. The porch overhang took up a sliver of the bottom of the picture, and the start of the forest took up a sliver of the top, and in the center was him, Erik, by his car on his phone.

"For whatever reason he likes you. And I need to judge if that's wise of him, because he's such a shit judge on his own. It's not a big deal. No one's going to go get their pitchforks and torches if you're not into him. We're extremely used to it. Just let me know so I can start to let him down easy."

Erik kept his eyes on the photo, even though he had a big urge to glare at Raven. Where the hell did she get off? For all her discussion of how she didn't care either way, he noticed she had a lot more to say on the subject of him dismissing Charles than of him dating him.

He passed the photo back to her.

"You should get the rest of these down. Charles and I are in a hurry."

He left Raven behind, passing through the shadowy hall between the dark room and the class room. The door was cracked open, allowing a little light and plenty of sound to reach him. He stopped on the threshold, taking advantage of both and trying not to think about how absolutely embarrassingly juvenile it was as he stood there and abjectly eavesdropped.

"—an idiot?" Charles was asking nervously, or maybe sadly. He could only see a strip of desks and the front door from his thin vantage point, but he could hear very well, so he focused on that.

"No," a low, gruff voice growled. "I don't. What's so idiotic about having a good time? And you did have a good time, didn't you?"

"_Yes_," Charles laughed. Erik smiled widely.

"Well then, what's to stop you from continuing to have a good time? You're not marrying him afterall; you might never even see him again. But why stop before you have to?"

"I don't know…"

"Think about it like this," Azazel suggested, voice slow and methodical. "If someone told you you'd have to give up ice cream tomorrow, what would you do today? Give it up early or enjoy it while you can?"

Erik held his breath to hear the answer, but missed it as he was slammed into the metal door and through it, stumbling out bruised and blinded to see Raven sauntering out behind him, pictures in hand.

"Raven!" Charles balked, jumping up from his seat beside Azazel on the teacher's desk to catch Erik and help him upright again. "What is the matter with you?"

"Sorry," she laughed, patting him apologetically on the ass. "Didn't see you there. Guess that's why they call it a dark room!"

"Did you get the rest of the pictures?" Charles demanded, brushing Erik off, and Erik didn't know what to make of the fact that his hands didn't linger anywhere in particular.

"Fine, fine," she sighed, handing them over. "Here you go."

"Thank you," Charles groaned, adding them to his stack in the folder. "We've got to get going now. Are you two coming up to the house with us?"

"Nah," Raven waved. "My work here is done. Think we'll go watch Court TV in the hotel room and…see what comes up?"

Azazel smiled at his girlfriend and she bit her lip provocatively back at him. Erik wasn't sure if he felt more disgusted or jealous, but finally fell on jealous. How come he couldn't drag Charles back to his hotel to have random middle of the day sex? Didn't he deserve after all he'd been through?

"I assume you'll still show up just in time for the photographer. She arrives at three. Please be presentable."

"So, no hickeys?" Raven teased, looking at Charles' throat meaningfully. He refused to blush, simply grabbing Erik's arm and leading him stiffly to the door, calling back over his shoulder, "Three o'clock. Don't be late."


	24. Chapter 23

There was a big white van parked in the gravel driveway, but other than that the Gone Away House looked just the same as yesterday: quaint, too slender, and innocuous. Erik clamped down on a shiver, and tried to unclutch the steering wheel where he was white-knuckling it.

The dying of the engine left only an overwhelming silence, and Erik immediately wished he'd left it running, left the radio on, something, anything.

Charles came to his rescue, filling the silence with his own caressing voice, soft and careful, not rushed now, not growling.

"It's not too late," he said. "You can still back out of this."

Huffing angrily, Erik forced himself out of the car, slamming the door behind him, but only made it to the edge of the gravel before his ire ran out and his indecision took hold again.

_What the fuck are you doing? _he wondered, staring up at the face of the house, the sun well risen behind it, casting him in the building's cold shadow.

He bit down on that cowardly voice, clenching his fists.

_Shut up. It was pot. Fucking hallucinations. It was not real. It has not beaten me._

He was shocked out of his determination when Charles came up behind him and put his arms around his waist, warming his spine, resting his chin on his shoulder and smiling into his face when Erik stared dumbly at him.

"Okay, my stubborn one," the man murmured, voice vibrating into Erik's back until he wanted to arch his spine into like a cat. "I get it. You're one of these American cowboy types, never backing down from a challenge. I'll stop wounding your pilgrim pride. But know…I'll be right as your side, Erik. I won't let anything happen to you."

_I don't need you babysitting me, _he wanted to growl, throwing Charles' hands off him in a tiff.

Or else reach behind him, cup Charles possessively in his hand, smirk at him, show him exactly how fine he was.

But he did neither. Instead, he put his hands over Charles' on his waist and rested his head a moment against Charles', breathing in the scent of his own shampoo on the man, his own detergent and his own soap, until Charles was just another of his things, belonging solely to him, and asked, "What did Azazel say to you?"

Charles stilled behind him, shifting on his feet.

"What are you talking about?" he asked with no little strain and Erik shook his head with a forfeiting smile.

Oh well. What the hell did it matter _what _Azazel had said to him, exactly, what he'd meant by it, so long as it got Charles back to normal, back to his own fun, flirtatious, _hands-on _self.

"Oh, forget it," he sighed.

"And besides," Charles moved on cheerfully, squeezing him. Erik wondered if it was some kind of reward for not pressing the issue, not forcing him to answer. "Darwin says the place hasn't made a peep all morning. Perhaps whatever happened yesterday was just a one-off!"

So it was of course at that moment that the front door exploded open and the redheaded boy Erik recognized from the show slammed onto the patio, shrieking, "Mr. Charles! Mr. Charles! Quick!" and then disappeared just as suddenly, tripping over the door jamb and lunging back into the house on all fours.

Charles spent one moment staring at him in surprise and in the next millisecond he was sprinting away, and Erik could swear he heard an audible bang as air rushed to inhabit his vacated space, that was how quickly he went from at Erik's side to bounding up the front steps.

"Fucking hell," he snarled and sprinted to follow, skidding on the vestigial sheen of grass slime still left over from yesterday's flood.

Erik would have been anxious about his return to the house but frankly the moment was too hectic for nerves. He banged through the front door, barely stopping to scrape his shoes off on the mat, immediately met with a barrage of sound and motion.

"Sean-check the stairwell readings! Hank, are you getting this!" the black man from the show was shouting, pointing randomly about the house, staring at a laptop he had set up on the kitchen counter. Charles was slathered right up on him, like jam on toast. Sean was sprinting between every wall box in the house. Someone upstairs was shouting downstairs, "I'm getting it! I'm getting it all!"

"Is this authentic? When did this start happening?" Charles demanded, shaking Darwin's shoulder excitedly.

"Just a minute ago! Hey—what happened to your neck?"

"What? Oh!" With a jolt Charles peeled himself off the other man and leapt about like a scared cat until he realized where Erik was, and then he relaxed with a sheepish blush, rushing over and drawing him in by the arm. "Erik! Sorry, Darwin this is Erik. Is Mr. Lensherr! From..from the ADN. He's the journalist."

Darwin had seemed pleasantly curious at first when he saw him, looking him up and down, smiling a little bit—but as soon as Charles introduced him his smile fell. Erik wondered what that was about, but the man's face, dark and modelesque, turned stony, and impassive and he knew he wasn't going to find anything out just through staring.

"Darwin, right? Nice to meet you," he tried.

"Armando," the man corrected, not taking his eyes off him. "You as well. I guess you're the one that's been keeping Charles so busy?"

The man's eyes tightened on Charles' throat and returned to him in a glare. Was that it? He didn't like him spending time with Charles? And why would that be…?

"I think the numbers are right!" Sean shouted from the landing on the second staircase. "I mean…what were the numbers again?"

"What's happening?" Erik questioned, looking around.

"Electromagnetic fluctuations, temperature—everything," Darwin explained, happiness returned despite himself as he turned back to the computers. Erik approached alongside him, taking his notebook out and jotting things down. He realized it was that same AC/DC machine they'd finagled with yesterday.

"This is the electromagnetic sensor. We're trying to map if these fluctuations are coinciding with the temperature fluctuations we're getting."

"Cold spots?" Charles questioned.

"No—hot spots!" Darwin corrected, looking excited.

Charles seemed surprised.

"Really?"

"Well that's what we're seeing so far."

"I told you so," Charles grinned happily and Darwin rolled his eyes, pushing him on the shoulder.

"Hey, I had every reason to be a little leery," the man growled, and when he said it he looked at Erik.

"Is Hank looking at the data from last night?"

"He's graphing it out now, and recording the current data. Do you think you got the same last night?"

"I thought I was getting cold spots, not hot ones, but I have to check something to be sure…"

"What's the difference—cold spots, hot spots?" Erik questioned.

Darwin didn't bother to answer, leaving it to Charles.

"Basically a cold spot represents a spirit drawing out energy and a hot spot coincides with expending energy."

"At least that's what we're trying to prove," Darwin added.

"Can I stop running now?!" Sean shouted from upstairs.

"Yes!" everyone shouted back at him and he tromped down the stairs, panting, face completely red, fanning himself.

"I'm starved. Did you get us breakfast?"

"Miss Frost sent us a muffin basket!" Darwin balked, pointing to the demolished wicker basket on the coffee table. That's right, Emma had said she was taking care of breakfast…With the morning he'd had, it was little wonder it had slipped his mind completely.

"Yeah but just bran," Sean gagged. "Oh, and banana, but that had walnuts in it. And the poppyseed had almonds. And the blueberry ones—ugh."

"God, Sean, what did you want?"

"It's supposed to come with chocolate! There's usually always at least one chocolate one…"

"Well we brought donuts," Charles admitted, looking around for the bag.

"We left them in the car. We could go get them…?"

"That would be great, thanks," Charles breathed, turning back to the computer and opening up another program. "Are these temperatures in real time?"

"Yeah, look here, go back—see this spike?"

"Wow!"

Shaking his head in disappointment, Erik just grumbled under his breath about fucking liars and went out to the car alone. Right by his side—that's what he'd said, right? Right by his fucking side; well was he at his side right now? _No_. And on top of that, he wasn't even paying attention to his side, wasn't paying attention to any part of him. He'd thought Charles had been asking for a spanking last night with that raw stunt in the hallway, but he was certainly begging for it today if this was going to be his attitude.

Erik got the donuts out of the car, already steaming up in the sunshine, and just stood there for a second, glaring up at the house. He had his keys. He could just toss the donuts on the front porch and go home, tell Emma he was sick, or just sit at his desk and pretend he'd gotten all the information he needed for the article. Charles probably wouldn't even fucking notice.

Yet, sighing, Erik grit his teeth and walked back inside. Maybe after the first flush of excitement had worn off Charles would be able to remember his promises. If not there were plenty of unused rooms to discipline him in.

"There!" Sean shouted, lunging at the computer screen everyone was huddled around. "It's back!"

When Erik shut the door behind him Darwin turned and just stared at him, and then Charles slowly turned to stare at him as well, and he knew with their shocked, steady gazes that something was wrong.

"What?" he croaked. "What is it?"

Darwin opened his mouth but nothing came out before Charles beat him to it.

"Nothing," the brunet said.

"Charles…" said Darwin, and the man turned on him, glaring meaningfully.

"Nothing." He growled. He turned then, approaching Erik and peeling him from where he'd plastered himself against the door. "Come on, Erik—let's go see what Hank has got. Sean, here's your breakfast."

"What was that?" Erik asked as Charles led him up the stairs. Charles glanced backwards and, apparently deciding their privacy was secure, he pressed Erik up against the stairwell wall and put his arms around his neck, smiling up at him.

"How are you? Still okay?"

"Yes," Erik grinned, glad he'd decided to stick it through. "I'm fine. What were you looking at on the computer?"

"Violent pornography, of course," said Charles, eyes glinting. "Tell me if you need a break."

Erik built up enough malignancy to grouse, but Charles was already bounding back up the stairs.

"Will you be listening if I do or are you going to be hypnotized by work again?"

"Hmm?" Charles questioned, and opened the office door without giving him a chance to repeat himself.

There was a very gangly man-boy sitting huddled in front of a laptop typing in data to a spreadsheet, and when he looked up at them the light reflected off his glasses, making him look blind.

"Charles!" he exclaimed eagerly. "Great find here. We were a bit worried when we first arrived, but it's looking up now. Oh, there was a bunch of stuff lying about the house when we got in. I put it all in the master bedroom so it'd be out of our way."

"You aren't investigating the master bedroom?"

"We haven't really specified any particular area of interest yet. Why, did something happen in the master bedroom?"

"I need to get my stuff," Erik interrupted, afraid Charles would answer him.

"Hm? Oh…oh, okay. I guess…I'll go with you?"

"_Yes_," Erik growled, glad that Charles had at least suspected as much.

Hank glanced between them, and then did a double take, seeing Charles' throat.

"Hey what happened to your…Um…Oh…So, is this…?"

"Oh, so sorry, Hank," Charles jumped in. "This is Erik Lensherr. He's the journalist we're working with. Erik, this is Hank McCoy. He's rather our all-around technical guru."

Hank blushed slightly, smiling at Charles, and then went back to his computer, letting them off the hook.

"It's nice to meet you, Mr. Lensherr. I guess the other guy didn't make it?"

Erik couldn't help quirking his head to the side as he asked, "Who?"

"Only Darwin said some charlatan was with you last night and got spooked, or pretended to get spooked, and that's why you guys missed the arrival."

Erik turned on his heel and left, hopefully before his blush could completely light up his face and Charles growled, "Thanks for that, Hank!" before running after him.

"What!" Hank shouted to them as Erik stalked them down the hall to the main bedroom, flinging the door open.

Darwin was inside, and looked up from a digital camera he was holding by the bed. In his other hand he was holding the photographs Raven had given them.

"Have you seen these?" he asked, looking through Erik to Charles, and Erik realized it was true: Darwin had thought he was some fraud throwing a shit fit in a haunted house for his readership—and now he probably thought he'd thrown a shit fit in a haunted house to get Charles to come home with him. His embarrassment was almost physically painful.

"Er…" Charles mumbled, brushing past him in the doorway. "Some of them. Why?"

Instead of answering, Darwin held up the photos, and Erik's heart imploded in his chest from pure mortification. On the front photo he recognized himself, leaning over the banister on the front porch, his ass very much on display.

_I told you to get rid of that! _He wanted to shout at Charles, but the man was already running away from him, taking the photo in his hands but not ripping it up so what the hell was he doing?

"What on Earth is that?" the brunet murmured.

"Yes," Darwin said, looking at Erik. "It's certainly…interesting."

Blushing, Erik was about to turn and make an escape, but Charles called him forward, "Erik, come look at this."

Gritting his teeth, he did so, waiting for the punch line, but rather than grabbing his ass and joking "I like the real thing better," Charles was pointing at a white mark on the photograph, up near Erik's head—a bright spark, like the flash before a lighter comes to flame.

"What is it?" he grumbled, refusing to acknowledge Darwin's gaze, which he could _feel_ drilling into him, mining and looking for something he couldn't fathom.

"Well, I don't know," Charles huffed, knocking him with his shoulder. Erik grimaced, feeling Darwin's gaze heat up, on the trail of something. What was with the guy? What did he want from him? Why did he have to look at him like that? Erik gazed anxiously over his shoulder where the bathroom door was open, suddenly very on edge. "It certainly is interesting…"

"Yeah," Erik growled. "I'll have Emma put it right on the first page. Can't we stop fucking staring at it now?" He yanked the photos out of Charles' hands, stuffing them back into the folder, ignoring Charles' hiss of pain.

"Watch it!" Darwin growled, seeming to get taller, like a dog putting up its hackles.

"It's fine," Charles muttered, sucking on his finger. "Just a papercut."

"Why don't you bring Hank his digital camera, see if he got anything like that in his photos?"

"Good idea," Charles said around his finger, and took the camera from Darwin, turning to go. Erik went to follow, but Darwin's hand on his arm stopped him.

"You probably want to start on the interviews, don't you?" he asked, smiling warmly, encouragingly.

"What? Oh…right, the interviews…" Charles kept walking, stranding him with Darwin.

"Come on. We can sit out on the front porch. Otherwise we might be in the way of the investigation." Erik was unsure, thinking he could just interview him in the office with Charles and Hank right there, but Darwin laughed and patted him on the shoulder conspiratorially. "You want to get out of the house, don't you? It can't be too comfortable for you after…"

"I'm fine," Erik growled, cutting him off, shifting uncomfortably as Darwin's eyes hardened, losing their warmth. Great, now the guy was just _sure_ he'd made the whole thing up last night to get into Charles' pants. "Okay. Let's make it quick."

They took the back stairs, and the first floor was silent and empty. Erik stopped on the last step, unsure. The basement door was open.

"Where's Sean?"

"Probably up with the rest of them."

"He didn't go downstairs?"

"I doubt it. We can't get the door open down there. Should we keep going?"

Taking a deep breath, Erik told himself it was a fucking pipe dream and that he had no reason to panic. He went to the front, reaching to grab the basement door to shut it soundly, confidently, fearlessly.

But in a moment, too fast for him to cry out or fight it, Darwin grabbed him, pushed him down the stairs, and slammed the door shut behind him.


	25. Chapter 24

Hurtled forward with surprising strength for the lithe man, Erik struggled to catch himself before he could topple headlong all the way to the landing, twisting his ankle and nearly getting whiplash he turned back to the door so quickly. It was no good, he realized as he pushed his weight against it, twisting at the unmoving handle, rattling the heavy wood in its frame.

"Darwin, what the fuck do you think you're doing?! Let me out of here!" he growled, throat tight, making his words sound slightly more hysterical than threatening. Darwin, apparently, was not cowed.

"I'm not sure what you did last night to pull one over on him so well," Darwin said back through the thick wood, slow calm voice carrying easily over the sound of the rattling door-knob. "And I'm not sure what kind of mechanism you used to set off the hot spots today, but the gig is up."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" he balked, bracing his foot on the step and slamming himself forward. The door didn't budge. His heart was racing now, breath burning in his lungs as it sunk in that, somehow, Darwin was stronger than him, was actually capable of keeping him locked down here. "Charles! Charles you asshole get down here!"

"Hush now, don't you think you've dragged him into this enough?"

"Fuck, fuck," Erik hissed, struggling, trying to force his mind to come up with something, anything, to talk his way out of this, to convince Darwin to let him the fuck out. There was nothing there, nothing but a white cold blanket of growing terror.

Struggling to at least dispel the blinding darkness if he could dispel this whole scenario, he fumbled to turn on the light- couldn't help crying out as the bulb exploded behind him. _Get me out of here, get me out of here. Get out, get out, get out._

"Darwin, I didn't do anything. I didn't do _anything_! Darwin, please let me out. Darwin, open the fucking door!" he managed to yell past the knot in his throat, kicking the door viciously.

He stopped immediately as he heard, far down in the darkness behind him the sound of a rusty door shrieking on its hinges.

"You're going to tell Charles what you did," Darwin was saying to him, but his voice seemed a long way off, reaching him at the bottom of a deep, dark well. He turned slowly, watching the blackness of the stairwell with not a pinpoint of light to see by. "And then you're going to leave. Miss Frost can send us a new journalist if she wants to, hopefully one with a better moral compass than yours."

"Darwin," he whispered, door sticking his cold sweat back against his skin as he pressed backwards, against the door, struggling to press through the door—out, _out. _Below him a board creaked, and there was the low, soft shuffle of a body moving up the stairs towards him. "Darwin, let me out. God, oh god, let me out. Charles, Charles, Charles-"

"What's going on down here? Where's Erik?" Somewhere, he supposed, Erik recognized Charles voice, it's tenor and tone, but here, in the dark, he couldn't seem to respond to it.

"Charles. Please, god, someone, get me out of here, out of here."

His chest seemed paralyzed, he couldn't draw breath, he _was_ drawing breath, huge gulps of breath, but it didn't seem to be _getting _to him. Like a mouse in the eyes of a snake, his only idea was to keep still, keep silent—let it not see him, let it not find him, let it not get him.

"What the fuck, Darwin! Get him out of there!"

The door rattled in its frame against his shoulders, the knob jounced in his hand, but all there was was him in this pitch-black stairwell and the scruff of footsteps coming closer.

"It's stuck," Darwin growled, and although Erik's eyes were dry, were trying too hard to see to allow them to tear up, he felt as if he were crying.

Down in the depths of the stairwell, Erik heard a low, sinister chuckle. And then gravelly, dark growling. Not like an animal, but like a human being, snarling and growling like a vicious dog, and that somehow made it worse. The growls grew closer, playful and dangerous, the snapping of teeth. Something glinted in the dark, something closer than Erik had expected.

He turned, falling against the door, banging, rattling, screaming, and the growling grew in his ears until it was a roar, until his ears ached, until he could feel the vibrations in his bones.

"Get him out!" Charles was screaming, and someone was yelling for a crowbar, for a screwdriver, for anything.

There was a bright spark of light and smell of burning flesh and a sharp, hot pain between Erik's shoulder blades, muting him and paralyzing him with agony—and it felt as if that spark burned him up inside, burned a hole right through him, and on the other side, at the depth of its burn, something welled up in his chest like an explosion or a scream and he couldn't breathe past it.

The door opened and he collapsed through. But the blackness remained, and he fell into an unconsciousness like a well.

* * *

He stared down at his shoes, at the hard wood floorboards beneath his shoes. It was quiet here, and he could hear his own breathing, slow and reassuring, his own heartbeat in his ears, gentle, lapping, like water on a dock.

The room was bright here, painted white, with broad, tall windows letting in the light. There wasn't any furniture in the room, but Erik liked that, he liked how simple his room was, how it kept the clutter at bay. It might be a lonely room but it was his room, it was his life, and the only thing he thought it could use was a chess set and a blue-eyed man to use it with. Well, he wouldn't say no to a bed, either.

Just as he was scoping out a good place for a candy jar or a condom caddy, there was a shuddering of the floorboards, a scraping of metal on wood. Obligingly, confusedly, like bumping into someone one hadn't even known was there, he shifted his foot back, away from the shudder. But it followed him, the grating insistency of it, tickling the underside of his foot through the sole of his shoe. He jumped back, breathing fitfully now, and saw motion between the sliver-thin gaps of the wood.

Someone was under the floor. And they were dragging a knife under his heels.

The smell of smoke flooded his nostrils. From the corner of his eye he saw the shadow of a man, and before he could turn his head it had disappeared into a puff of smoke and a dark, growling chuckle, and the whole room erupted into flame.

Shouting with surprise, with fear, fighting his way through fire and acrid smoke like burning corpses, Erik struggled for the windows but there were no windows, only smoke, heavy and greasy like walls in a slaughterhouse. Under him the burning floorboards buckled and heaved, and something, using the weakness of half-burnt wood, broke its way out.

* * *

"I don't know why!" someone was hissing quietly. "It was right there and—god—I didn't think _this _was going to happen! I thought he was faking it!"

"Does it look like he's fucking faking it?!" Charles growled back, voice high-pitched with _rage _and Erik had never heard him like that before. "You should be ashamed of yourself! How could you play around with a house like this! I have never seen you bee so _despicably_ irresponsible, Mr. Munoz!"

"Charles, please!"

"Don't talk to me—I'm too angry, don't say another word to me."

"I think he's awake," said a low, shy voice, and after a short scuffle there were cool hands caressing his brow, pushing his hair back, touching his cheek.

"God—he's burning up. Erik?" Charles whispered. "Erik are you all right? Erik please, please say something."

With more strain than he was used to, Erik managed to open his eyes, struggling to place himself.

He was on his back, on something soft but structured. Couch. There was a pillow under his head. He recognized the light fixture on the ceiling and the knickknacks on the mantle and the lace doilies on the coffee table. He was still in the goddamned house.

Charles was kneeling beside him, eyes huge and terrified. Sean was rocking himself on the other side of the coffee table, sheet-white and shaking. Hank was sitting on a footstool, watching quietly as if he were going to take notes. Darwin stood chewing his manicured nails in the doorway.

"I'm going to be sick," he realized aloud, and in a dizzying flurry of motion and movement that made him feel even sicker, they got him to the bathroom.

Charles shut the door behind them immediately, slamming it on Darwin's attempts to help, stroking Erik's hair as he retched into the toilet. Nothing came up. All the sickness and smoke and terror were still inside him.

"Here," Charles proffered, rinsing out a little cup that was being used as a vase, tossing the dead flowers in the sink, handing him the tap water. The man's hand was shaking.

Erik was about to take it but then remembered the taste of corpses in his mouth and recoiled, shrinking back against the wall. Something shifted in his chest, like an egg about to hatch, and he wondered if he wasn't actually going to be sick. Charles put the water down with a rapping clank and sat beside him, taking him in his arms and murmuring into his hair, stroking him, holding him very tightly. Erik kept his face buried in the man's throat, and breathed in his own scent on him, tried to breathe past the smoke in his mouth and the ache in his chest.

His brain felt scorched out, nothing leftover but ash and rubble, leaving him hazy and sick. Hot and cold seemed to crash over him in waves, nausea a constant undertow, shaky, mindless: it was like the worst flu of his life, like the verge of fainting, like near-death. _I'm dying, _he thought to himself, but he was too apathetic with affliction to care about the fact. He'd been burned through, had been left a barren, charred scrap of land. But slowly, very slowly, wildlife seemed to return, so-slow seedlings of thought stirring under the debris, maneuvering their way back to life.

He had no idea how long he'd been sitting there when he slowly seemed to come back to reality, one sense at a time—the feel of Charles solid and guarding against him, the sound of the man murmuring into his hair, the smell of water and the cool dampness of something caressing his brow.

He opened his eyes, realizing they were closed, and Charles pulled back, looking over him anxiously. He obviously saw something he liked, smiling gently, stopping his lathing of his brow with the damp washcloth he'd gotten somewhere, pressing his palm against Erik's damp forehead, smile widening.

"You blighter—you gave me quite a fright. You're not feeling so hot now."

"Was I before?"

"And you were murmuring to yourself. Nothing I could catch, but it was certainly eerie. I was beginning to think I should call the hospital, or maybe a priest."

"No luck; I'm Jewish. You'd have to call my rabbi."

Charles didn't succumb to his attempt at chit-chat, striking certainly where his real interest lay. "Erik, what did you mean? What did you mean when you said the door was open?"

"What?" he asked, and his voice came out groggy, and he realized they must have been there for a very long time because his legs were completely asleep, his mind at least half so. He pulled away, stretching them out and groaning in pain. Charles clambered up beside him, helping to pull him to his feet. It didn't work, and he had to sit down on the closed toilet, stretching them slowly in front of them before he would be able to stand.

"When you came out. Right before you…you passed out. You said, 'The door is open'."

Erik frowned, shrugged. He didn't remember that. Didn't want to remember any of it.

"I guess because you guys had finally opened the goddamn door."

Charles joined him in frowning, but Erik didn't like the look of it. "Why? What other door would I have been talking about?"

"I don't know. I thought maybe you meant the metal door."

The blood froze in his veins, but he still managed to gasp, "Is that door open?"

"No, not at all," Charles said quickly, rubbing his back as he saw the strain it had put on him. Erik hissed and jerked back at the sudden pain that flared up between his shoulder blades, unthinkingly trying to remember what had happened. He succeeded, unfortunately.

"He touched me. He touched me," he gasped, struggling for breath, as it all came rushing back, struggling with his buttons as he jumped up tearing at his clothes.

"Erik!" Charles cried, grasping his hands and stilling their palsy.

"He touched me, Charles. He set me on fire."

The man stared up at him, worry evident, but he simply asked, "Where?" and helped Erik with his shirt, pulling it up and over his shoulders.

Shaking on weak, tingling legs, Erik held his shirt in place, staring down at his chest, probing it anxiously, afraid he'd find the thing that had been put there, not put there but let free there, expanding and taking over. Nothing moved against his hand. Why had he expected something to?

Charles' own hand brushed over his shoulders, back and forth, starting high and going lower.

Erik gasped when they hit the mark on his spine.

"There?" Charles asked, and Erik's face ignited with horrified, shameful horror. Because if Charles had to ask then that meant there was nothing there. Nothing real.

What had happened to him? What was happening to him? Was he going mad?

He pulled his shirt back down, ignoring Charles' cries and pulling away from his grasping hands.

"Erik!" the man balked. "I've got to take photographs for evidence!"

"Why?" he growled. "You looked—there's nothing there!"

"Not to the naked eye," Charles argued. "But we've got blacklight, infrared…"

Erik just crossed his arms and pushed himself back against the wall, the spot aching against his clothes, tugging like a line through him, like a burn through to the center of his heart.

"I don't care. I don't care about your fucking evidence. I want to go home."

"Now, Erik," Charles huffed, taking him and sitting him down like an unruly child. "Let's not be hasty."

"I'm not being fucking hasty!" he growled up at the other man. "I can't do this, okay. I thought last night was a fluke, but today—and Darwin—and…I just can't, okay?"

Charles held him close, pressing him against his chest, and he realized he was hyperventilating, pressed his brow against Charles' ribs as he tried to breathe.

"Erik, what _did _happen last night?" the man asked as soon as he caught his breath. He went to pull away but Charles didn't let him, dropping to his knees and holding his shoulders.

"Erik…" he said. "I know you've been through a lot. I know it's hard to process. Don't take all the burden on yourself. This is my job, Erik. Whatever it is, I've dealt with it before. Please, let me help you."

Charles sat on his heels, watching him, begging him, his hands warm through his shirt, his mouth bitten red, his borrowed hoodie off-center and over-large.

"I can't. Not here. I can't," he whispered, and his mouth felt shivery and ungainly, like holding a cowardly sword. _He'd hear him. If he told, he'd hear him and he'd come back for him—he'd burn him, he'd burn him again._

Something about his terror must have bled through, because Charles didn't browbeat him.

"It's okay," the man assured, rubbing comforting patters on his knees. "We don't have to talk about it now…I should get it on tape, anyway. My God Erik, but did you have any idea this place was such a hotbed of activity?"

"Of course not," he huffed. "If I'd known I never would have come here."

"And compared to yesterday…hardly a hiccup all day…"

"Can you please stop looking so excited over these so-called 'hiccups'?"

"Well I'm sorry, I don't mean to downplay the very frightening things that have been happening to you… but it _is_ exciting, scientifically speaking. I mean, if you had to go through any of this madness, at least your doing it is furthering the data of a very under-represented realm of science."

"You think Marie Curie was _so_ lucky to die of radiation poisoning, don't you."

Charles' face lit up red as a Christmas light. "I'm not saying it was the most pleasant way to go, but there's plenty of pain in the world and much of it is a lot less useful than that." Erik got the feeling the man was speaking from experience, and Charles seemed to realize that it certainly sounded that way because he blushed even darker and changed the subject in a stuttering huff. "Well—that—that's enough of that. We should be getting back now, if you're feeling recovered."

"Back?"

"Yes! Well, I mean, there's still a lot of work to do, data to process—I'm going to have an overhaul of that stairwell, and then the cupboard from last night, try to attain as much raw numbers as we can. Get the cameras out, the video recorders, record your interview—there's tons to do."

"Not for me," Erik laughed, breathy with disbelief. "Charles—I told you and I meant it. I'm not going back out there."

"What?" was all Charles could manage at first, with a wide-eyed, uncomprehending stare that made Erik want to laugh again—but he was worried it would turn hysterical and so didn't risk it. "Erik," the man began to argue in earnest in his silence. "Now come along, don't start again. This is bigger than us, Erik. We have to see this thing through. We have to collect all we can while we can!"

"What the fuck are you talking about? Listen—you collect all the fucking data you want; I'll wait at home."

"What are we supposed to collect without you? Erik—the house only responds to you!"

Erik would have been shocked into silence, into terror, but his brain was coming back online with a vengeance and cut the terror off at the pass with pure reason.

"Don't be fucking dumb," he growled. "The house can't _only _respond to me because the house has been haunted for a hundred fucking years and I just got here yesterday. Who was it responding to for the last fucking century then?"

Charles huffed, obviously impassed there, and hurtled right over the impediment.

"I have no clue who else it may be honed to, but I do know it is honed to you and you're the one we have on hand."

"No, I'm not. Because I'm going the fuck home. I'll tell Emma you fucked me into a coma and I didn't regain consciousness until tomorrow. She'll be pissed but I'll make up an article and she'll recover when she realizes our readership is not that discerning."

"Now, Erik," the man tried sugar instead of vinegar, smiling sweetly, finger-combing his hair. "You needn't be the least bit worried. You won't be alone. I'll be—"

"Right by my side?" Erik growled, catching the man's wrist. "Sorry, Charles—I've heard that one before."

He wished automatically he hadn't said it, hadn't struck the low-blow. The pained half-grunt that escaped the man, like someone had punched him in the gut but he didn't want anyone to know, was one of the worst things he'd experienced that day, and that was _certainly _saying something.

It shamed and guilted him more than any argument could, all the way to the point where he gave in, weakly and conciliatorily, but wholly nonetheless.

"Hey," he balked. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry okay? I know it's a hassle, babysitting me like this. I know you have your own job to do. I know you can't be joined to my hip all fucking day like an infant. Come on—forget it—let's go, we'll go back, it's okay."

"No," Charles murmured, shaking his head, his face drawn and ashen. It was suddenly that same boy standing before him, the one from the school ID, pale and wary, quailing under the first blow and waiting timorously for the next. His voice was faint and distracted, caught up in his own pain too much to think carefully about his words. "I promised you and I broke that promise. You don't have to tell me I've disappointed you—I know—I know."

Erik cut him off there, before the man's voice broke even more, tugging him close but Charles was stiff and ungainly in his arms. His pale blue eyes were guarded, and filled to the brim with some kind of recognition, as if he saw now the resemblance between Erik and someone, something awful. Who was it his words reminded him of, what darkness, that could daunt him so fully?

"Stop that. Please. You haven't. I'm not disappointed. I've never been less disappointed in another human being. If I'm angry it's at that douchenozzle Darwin."

"Don't," Charles laughed weakly, nudged him, pushing his head against Erik's jaw. He pulled away in the next second, slipping free of Erik's loose grip, fiddling with his hair nervously. "You have to understand. Darwin wasn't trying to be cruel. He had no idea the house would react that way to you. He was only trying—inappropriately, it's true—to be a friend, a good friend to me."

"Is that all he is?" Erik asked slowly. "Just a friend?"

Charles' eyes flashed quickly to his, intense and probing, incredibly cautious.

"Of course." He seemed thoughtful for a moment, and discerning, smiling faintly. Erik could imagine his internal monologue: _He's not them. I don't need to remember them, that, whatever it was. It was an accident. He didn't mean it. I don't have to remember. _When the man turned back to him his smile was more secure, his strong visage back in place. He held Erik's arm without a falter, drawing him to the door. "Of _course_."


	26. Chapter 25

Charles' shoe was tapping, fidgeting manically on Erik's hip, and he grabbed the appendage and squeezed it hard to get it to stop. Still, the man was too distracted to so much as glance at him, twisted in his perch on the dining room table so that he could try and see what Hank and Darwin were doing lurking over the dual video cameras that were pointing straight at Erik like the barrels of two guns.

_Why did I agree to this? _he wondered, feeling aching and uneasy.

Charles seemed to be wondering the same thing.

"No, Darwin, the green button—Settings through the green button!"

"You want to come do it?" Darwin growled because this was not the first time Charles had started back-seat-setting-up-the-infrared.

"Yes," Charles sulked, but retreated from the temptation: turned back around, hugging his knees, realizing Erik was still holding his foot. The brunet rubbed his hand for too short a moment before pushing it off him.

Erik hoped Darwin and Hank were too distracted to catch his pout on tape.

"We need to get this on film," Darwin had struggled to explain when they finally quit the bathroom, before Erik had even really noticed Sean lugging in film equipment from the van. This was only the second thing he'd struggled with since their re-arrival; Darwin's first instinct had been to apologize like a madman. Erik had cut him off immediately with a cold shoulder and a stony face. He did not want to be apologized to, because as soon as accepted an apology it would be ungentlemanly to loathe Darwin as much as his bitter sense of vendetta demanded. Darwin didn't fight him over the right to be forgiven, seemed to escape their awkward stalemate by fleeing back to his relationship with Charles, namely: work. "None of this is worth anything if we can't document it."

"What?" Erik had growled immediately, yanking Charles' arm away where Darwin had grasped it in his eagerness. "You don't believe me?"

Charles had stopped him before he could get any more antagonistic than that, putting a staying hand on Darwin's shoulder as well, saying, "It's not about belief, Erik. It's about proof. And I happen to agree. If we can capture these manifestations on visible format, it could be a real breakthrough. We've got to at least try."

Darwin nodded, apparently content to ignore Erik since he couldn't make up with him. "I've got Hank setting up some floodlights in the stairwell so we can get a camera set up there. We've already got the GoPros up in the living room and library—"

"Library? Did something happen in the library?"

"Not exactly," Darwin had hedged. "But Hank says there's a really promising heat flux there."

"I need another set up in the master bedroom, too. Maybe Sean can do it when he's finished carrying…" Charles said, an edge of glumness sinking into his voice. Erik had had the urge to rub his back, or ruffle his hair, and was halfway to doing so when Charles shifted away slightly, giving him a warning glance. Right. Professional. Can't have the team seeing you be a real human being. He dropped back and tried to ignore Darwin's nit-picking gaze.

"Why can't you do it yourself?" the man asked slowly.

Charles didn't answer him.

"Let's set up at the table so we can still get _some_ work done while it's recording. Erik, sit here, please? Sean darling? Can you be a dear and set up a GoPro upstairs in the main bedroom? Just above the bed facing the bathroom—make sure the door's open. And can you please grab my laptop? And Erik's satchel, also."

Everything seemed to move too quickly from there. It seemed hardly a moment before Erik was sitting there as in front of the firing squad, Hank suddenly beaming with pride.

"Okay," the lanky man beamed, enjoying this blow too much. "I think we've got it. I'm going to start recording."

Charles got down off the table and moved away, cattycorner to him, close but out of the way of the cameras. Erik tried to ignore the heavy weight this left in his stomach, tried not to start fidgeting, shivering.

_Don't, _he wanted to cry out, like when he was a child realizing he had not quite steeled himself for a vaccination as well as he'd initially thought. Like when he'd broken his leg and the doctor had said, _Okay, I'm going to count to three and then you're going to feel a little pain_, and it had sounded so doable at 1 but when they got to 2 he'd changed his mind and demanded they start over. _I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready._

Sean seemed equally on edge about the little experiment, even though it had nothing at all to do with him. "I'm not so sure this is a good idea," he squeaked suddenly, wringing his hands, cowering behind Hank. "I mean, what if it comes back?"

"This might come as a surprise to you," Charles hummed, turning on his computer, eager to return to his first love: work. "But, as paranormal investigators, we do actually _want_ it to come back."

_I don't, _Erik thought, whole-heartedly. He looked down at his hands—they had started to shake.

_Don't press record yet, _he looked up to say, but the dual red lights were already glaring at him like two eyes, and behind them were Darwin and Hank, both watching, waiting, for something to happen. Erik pressed his hands under the table against his thighs and tried to breathe around the aching in his chest.

"Friends," Charles sing-songed, smiling at the hypnotized men, breaking them from their staring match with Erik. "Don't you think we'd be better off getting some work done while this records? It could take a while, after all."

And take a while it did.

At first Erik couldn't get himself down from his anticipatory high despite the inaction—Sean had gone off to read a comic, Hank was comparing temperature data with Charles, Darwin was analyzing the MADS sensors and keeping an eye on the stairwell, and still there was nothing Erik could do but stare at the red, piercing dots on the camcorders and wait, wait for it. Still, it was better than where his eye wanted to land, where it insisted on probing with the entirety of his peripheral vision: the gaping hole of the stairwell door and its illuminated depths, like floodlights in a coffin.

He jerked out of it finally only when Charles reached over under the table and gripped his knee, looking at him with eyes like two calm seas and smiling his full-lipped, troublesome smile, saying, "Oi. Get some work done, slacker."

Choking on a laugh, Erik had done just that, willing his limbs into movement, his brain into action.

Sean had brought down his satchel and Erik grabbed it, slid it in front of him on the table, took out his H2 from the side pocket and was surprised to find his cell phone there as well. He was momentarily sidetracked with the thought of plugging himself in and watching the couple episodes of _Band of Brothers _he had stashed on the thing, but it had gone dead, so he let the pipe dream fall away and resigned himself to work.

Inside the satchel was his waistcoat and belt from last night, which he managed to keep from blushing over, he hoped. He slid Charles the tidy ziplock bag of clear buttons he found, and the man wasn't so lucky, cheeks going fire-engine red in no time flat, making him chuckle anew.

He'd never written an article by hand before, wasn't sure where to start it, and so messed about, getting his headphones and plugging himself into his H2 to go over his interviews with Charles again.

They took his mind off things, if only because he got to relive how incredibly awful he'd been to the man on first meeting him. What kind of masochist was Charles that he'd thought the douchebag on that tape was a good investment of a passionate night? He wasn't sure how he'd pulled last night, or, rather, that morning, off, but he certainly hoped it had been in spite of his shitty first impression rather than a propensity of Charles towards shitty people.

Darwin was certainly shitty enough, and Charles certainly did seem to get along with him.

Frowning, doodling circles on his legal pad, Erik couldn't help but let his mind wander down that well. Charles said they were just friends, and he had said he wasn't dating anyone, Erik was sure he'd said that. But still…there seemed to be too much going on there for friendship to be the end all be all of that relationship. Darwin was too interested in Charles, and Charles was too careful of Darwin for that to be the case. If they were just friends right now, if Charles wasn't dating anyone right now, was that the way they both wanted it? Was that the way they both planned it? Was that the way it had always been?

Erik's heart tightened painfully in his chest.

He'd fallen into Charles' life all of yesterday. Was it not the open field he'd first imagined—was it instead full of early birds, prior engagements, pre-promises? Were there parts of the man already carved up for people who had been at the table long before Erik had even thought to place his bid?

_No. _Erik decided, forcing himself to calm down, tearing off his paper full of anxious scribblings and shoving it in his satchel.

Maybe Charles wasn't straight off the manufacturer's table like Erik had stupidly pretended, maybe he came with a past, but so did Erik, so did anyone who wasn't sixteen and fresh to the fight. Charles was straightforward, he was honest, he wasn't afraid of saying whatever he wanted to say. If he said there was nothing between him and Darwin besides friendship then that's all there was to it. It was up to Erik to take it past that. Up to him to be equally honest, equally forthright. He wanted to be with Charles, he knew that fully, completely. What use did he think it was to keep the idea to himself?

Charles had shown his strength, his courage—it was Erik's turn now. Charles might have rescued him from a couple of ghosts, but Erik was going to do the more enjoyable thing. Erik was going to take the real plunge; was going to ask that damned ghost hunter to date him.

"_We prefer paranormal researcher,_" the man's voice said in his ears. "_Or investigator if you must."_

"_Of course_," his own voice sneered back, before getting cut off and in that moment Erik promised to pay the brunet back a thousand-fold for how awful their first meeting had been.

In the next moment he was too distressed to think much of anything.

With a click and a fumble the first interview was over, and Erik was surrounded by the noisy silence only an empty tape could give, the soft sound of wind in a tunnel, steady waves on a far-off beach; then slowly, layering up, there was the shuffle of movement, the clack of something hitting metal, the schluff of a body hitting the ground, the grunt of his own breath as his ribs had readjusted to the wooden flooring. The soft, quiet whispering of the people in the vent.

Even holding his breath, Erik couldn't make out what was being said, no matter the automatic straining of his ears, his mind, it made no sense, just the whispering, whispering, of people, how many people? milling about, talking secrets amongst themselves. Fragile sounds made their way above the gentle sea of noise: a low, pained moan, a soft, breathless almost cough, a woman weeping.

Erik's heart, or something close by his heart, twisted so wrathfully in his chest that he jerked in his seat, would have cried out if he'd been able to even breathe around the pain of it.

But in a moment, before Charles or any of the others could fully form their surprised yelps of concern, the pain had dissipated, disappeared, leaving an ache no worse than when he first sat down. He was left sitting there just as shocked as everyone else at his antics, at his sudden violent flinching.

"I'm all right," he growled, blushing, pushing his headphones off and stopping his tape. "I'm all right, it was just fucking heartburn or something! Calm down!"

Darwin had come around from the kitchen counter, whether to check on him or the cameras, Erik wasn't sure. Either way, the man just frowned at his demanding barking and glanced at Charles, who was already out of his seat and refusing to be bossed around.

"What was it? What happened?" Charles demanded, rubbing his chest where Erik was palpitating. "You're warm again." The man moved his hand up to Erik's forehead and Erik almost laughed, it was such a motherly, playing-doctor thing to do. He caught the man's hand and rubbed his stubbly cheek against it; he was sure to let go before Charles could pull away.

"I'm fine," he assured. "I'm just not as used to pure sugar for breakfast as you are."

"Darwin?" Charles asked, looking over his shoulder.

The black man just shook his head, scowling at the camera screens.

Charles sighed, having the gall to sound a bit frustrated that it turned out to be nothing, and collapsed back petulantly in his chair beside Hank.

"We need to figure out what is triggering these violent reactions, otherwise how on earth are we supposed to instigate it? We need to think."

"Well," Darwin nodded seriously, "Let's think then. What situations brought about the manifestations before? Could we recreate those parameters?"

"No!" Erik balked.

"I'm only talking hypothetically," Darwin assured.

Erik refused to be assured.

"Well stop talking about it at all. This shit isn't happening to you. You don't give a fuck what instigating it means, what it feels like."

"Erik please calm down," Charles demanded. "No one's talking about locking you in the basement again so please don't pretend as such."

"It seems to be focused on Mr. Lensherr," Hank pointed out needlessly. "Maybe we should explore what exactly it is about him that's drawing a reaction. It might turn out to be something we can recreate with a willing participant, if need be."

"Maybe it's his sunny personality," Darwin muttered, but not quietly enough. Charles ignored him completely in any case.

"Great idea, Hank! Maybe we could recreate our Colorado experiment? No, no, too messy…"

"What about Hesselius' experiment in England?"

Erik hit the table, louder than he was wanting but still, it shut everyone up.

"I. Am not. A fucking _labrat._"

"Oh, Erik," Charles laughed good-naturedly, patting his shoulder. "Of course you're not a _labrat_! Anyway, it's not the sort of experiment you're thinking of—Hesselius' test was simply sort of… an interview. You're not afraid of a little interview, are you?"

"How the hell is an interview supposed to help you?" he grumbled, not enjoying getting laughed at, even if it was just Charles.

"Well," Hank jumped to explain, pushing his glasses up excitedly. "The tactic he used is, you ask a series of questions and basically…well…wait to see which one the site responds to, and then you refocus your questions to that, and so on and so forth until…well…"

"Until what? What happened at the end of Hesselinny or whoever's experiment?"

Erik was sure he didn't want to know because everyone was suddenly blushing and picking at their nails, but Sean answered regardless, in his own way.

"Is that the one with the guy who died or the guy who went crazy?"

Charles turned in his seat to glare at him, thus unable to stop Hank from saying, 'helpfully', "Both, technically."

"That is completely irrelevant," Charles growled to shut them both up, turning to Erik and patting his hand. "There were extenuating circumstances. It's not indicative of the stratagem. The chances of you going crazy or dying are negligible, I promise."

Erik was less than relieved.


	27. Chapter 26

A/N: Sorry I'm such crap at uploading, so here's an appeasement chapter! It comes so quick on the heels of the last one because it's comparatively uneventful and I didn't want you to wait another week for almost-uneventful and then get mad at me and vow to never read anything I write ever again, or else glare at me through your computer screen (I can feel that, you know). So here! My apology chapter! Fingers crossed that I can at some point stay on schedule with these things so appeasement posts become a thing of the past... A girl can dream.

* * *

Darwin pulled up a chair beside the cameras and stared at Erik like a curious animal that was going to do an exciting trick. Hank pulled up a chair and sat beside Charles, staring and Erik while simultaneously jotting in a notebook, apparently under the impression that if he looked away for even a moment, he'd miss it. Sean stood behind Hank, wringing his hands and staring at Erik as if he could explode gore and cruor over the lot of them at any given moment. Charles sat at his laptop, hands poised like daggers over the keyboard, but on his mouth was a quirking smile he was struggling to suppress, as if Erik sitting there squirming under all these probing eyes was something he found almost adorably hilarious, but knew he shouldn't.

Erik scowled and kicked him lightly under the table, making him wince, making him lose control of his smile momentarily.

"Shall we begin?" Charles coughed, rubbing his shin.

"I'll start," Darwin said eagerly, turning to Erik with relish. "Have you ever experienced paranormal activity before?"

He took a moment to curtail the roll of his eyes, sitting back in his seat, crossing his arms.

"No," he said through his teeth.

Darwin was poised on the edge of his chair, waiting for more. Erik turned to Hank, with an edge of glee stifled completely under his bored façade, moving on.

"Oh," the lanky man chirped, surprised and being up to bat so soon, messing with his glasses, straightening his hair. "Um…have you…have you ever had an out of body experience?"

"A what?" Erik scoffed, frustrated already. This was a waste of time. A fucking waste of time. Emma was crazy to want him to sit through this. He should go home and simply tell her he'd been at the house all day. Charles would back him, surely…wouldn't he?

"He means, have you ever almost died," Charles explained, waving his hand flippantly. "Near-death and out-of-body experiences have been shown to have a direct correlation with single-focus paranormal activity."

Erik stared, and so did Sean, but luckily the red-head beat him to the embarrassing verbalization.

"I have no idea what you just said," Sean gasped.

Sighing, Charles said to the boy, "It really would be easier if you read our literature, Mr. Cassidy."

Turning to him, Charles continued, exasperated but committed. "When a site focuses almost solely on a single individual, it's almost always related to a past near-death or out-of-body experience (not counting demonic haunting or natural sensitivity, but that almost never results in a _single_-site phenomenon). Have you ever almost died? Have you ever been hospitalized? Have you ever been horrifically sick to the point where it is within the realm of possibility that you could have eventually died from it?"

Erik very nearly wanted to laugh, because Charles was inexplicably almost cute when he was this excitable, when his hands were cutting through the air as if he wanted to strike out at this mystery, when he spoke so breathlessly, when his eyes flashed so passionately…

"No." Erik tried to appease his obvious disappointment by explaining. "I've never had a thing wrong with me. I broke my leg when I was sixteen, but it was a slide-tackle, not a ghost-attack. I've always had pretty good health—I've never even been to the hospital, apart from my leg."

Hank looked up, brow quirked curiously.

"Never? You've never been to the hospital? Apart from the…the soccer injury, I mean?"

"He's exaggerating," Darwin accused, rolling his eyes, making Erik want to growl or pout_. He was not._

"I'm not exaggerating. My mother hated hospitals. I wasn't even born in a hospital."

It was obvious Darwin wanted to continue to argue the point, but Charles was asking another question so he couldn't.

"But surely you must have gone in…for check-ups, for vaccinations, for childhood illnesses?"

"There was this lady's house we went to one time when I got chicken-pox, does that count? She gave me a poultice and a disgusting bottle of oil I had to swallow twice a day… My dad did take me to the middle school to get some vaccinations, I remember, but my mom wouldn't go."

"So was it simply hospitals she hated or the medical profession as a whole, then?"

"What? Oh…" Erik tried to think back; it was all so long ago. "No, I guess she didn't much care for doctors in and of themselves. She must have been the only Jewish mother in existence to not want her son to grow up to be a doctor."

Erik nearly bit his tongue on his next words, nearly fell out of his seat—upstairs, there was a bone-shaking _BANG!,_ like a firecracker going off, and everyone sat rooted in their seats, staring at the ceiling. Erik's fingers were turning white on the edge of the table.

"Sean," Charles murmured. "Go see what that was."

"_Are you out of your fucking mind?!_" the boy squeaked back. "I'm not going the fuck up there!"

"I'll go," Hank gasped eagerly, and raced up the back staircase.

"The doctor thing? Jewish?" Darwin hissed to Charles.

"That or the mother," Charles murmured back.

Erik started to feel queasy.

"The GoPro fell off the wall," Hank explained glumly when he returned. At his words, everyone's excitement fell off immediately—Erik was even able to smile a little in relief when Hank turn frowning at Sean. "You put it up with Duct Tape? _Really?_"

"What?" the boy balked. "I didn't have time to screw it in… It was creepy up there…I've never had any complaints before!"

"Well consider this your first then," Hank grumbled, throwing himself back into his chair.

"Where were we?"

"Might be the Jewish question," Darwin said. Hank shook his head though, frowning.

"I don't know. I mean, my mother was Jewish. I'm technically Jewish…"

"Are you really?" Charles said, surprised. "Gosh. I always thought you were… I don't know…Methodist or something. Aren't you Methodist?"

"Um, my dad's a Mennonite…I guess I'm mostly…Agnostic."

"You can't be," Darwin gasped.

"Darwin," Charles warned quickly, cutting off what was obviously an oft-refrained soap box speech.

"All I'm saying is, why go all that way towards disbelief and stop with just one more step to go, that's all."

Hank opened his mouth to argue back but shut it when Charles shot him a look. _Now is __**not **__the time._

"Okay, what about your mother," Hank said instead, frowning at his notes. "How's your relationship with her?"

Erik felt his skin go cold with shock. It was a long time, he realized, since he'd met anyone who didn't _know_. In this town, people knew what his grandfather's favorite color was—he'd never had someone just _not know_.

"What?" Hank asked, quailing under what was obviously a very black glance from Charles.

Erik cleared his throat and tried to come up with the proper words.

"My mother…my mother…died. When…when I was fifteen."

Darwin perked up eagerly, actually smiled, making Erik hate him all the more. Charles just waved down his giddiness as if it were completely understandable, yet unfortunately misplaced.

"My mother's dead, too," the brunet pointed out with disappointment.

Erik couldn't help his jolt of surprise, even if it was on tape now.

"You never told me that!" he gasped.

"Oh gosh!" Darwin gasped as well, just as scandalized. "You _didn't_? But…but you two have known each other so _long_!"

Charles bit down on his laugh, turning it into a furtive and ill-contained smile, eyes crinkling, refusing to be talked out of humor at his expense.

Somewhere inside him his hatred ignited into something more passionate, and he glared at Darwin with the heat of it.

The man just glared coolly back at him, refusing to sweat. _I don't care for you much, either _the look seemed to assure. Guilt only took Darwin so far, it seemed, and Erik, for whatever reason, had run that tab down quickly. He couldn't help but think the reason was Darwin's own jealous love of Charles, and started gnashing his teeth bitterly. Let the man be jealous, let him be cool and feisty all he wanted—just don't let him make Charles smile like that. Don't let him make Charles laugh. Don't show Erik that he wasn't the only person on earth Charles could have a good time with.

"How did she die, if you don't mind me asking?"

"I do mind," Erik growled, and everyone's eyebrow's jumped, staring at him, as if why on earth should he mind?

"It wasn't a ghost, okay?" he assured with a grown.

"That's not what he meant," Charles assured. "More like…was it… ahem… violent? Sudden?"

Erik scowled at his hands clutched together on the tabletop. What was the least he could say to get them off his back about this?

"She had an aneurism and died during surgery," he grit out. "Can we change the subject now?"

"So she died at the hospital?" Darwin asked, eager.

Charles could apparently tell he was already at the end of his rope, because he put the man off, scoffing and shaking his head, "Come now, Darwin, what are we saying? The house hates people related to people who died at hospital? We'd all be getting responses, if that were the case."

"Maybe," Hank struck on. "Maybe we're going about this all wrong. Maybe we're being much too complicated. I mean…if we just look at it in current terms. Why is the house responding to him and not us? I'm sort of Jewish, he's sort of Jewish." Erik didn't point out that he wasn't _sort of _Jewish, he was absolutely Jewish. Pretty much. "His mother's dead, your mother's dead. But there's something that separates us completely:" Here, Hank paused, glancing eagerly from interested face to interested face, drawing it out. Finally, just before he was about to lose his audience, he explained: "He's from here and we're not!"

There was complete silence as everyone simply stared at Hank.

"Huh," Darwin said finally.

"A regional-focused paranormal response," Charles murmured to himself, eyes flashing with thought.

"Does that mean I don't have to worry?" Sean perked up.

"How long have you lived in Avalon?" Darwin asked suddenly, focused tightly on him.

"Always," Erik admitted. "I was born here. My father was born here; his father was born here…"

"And your mother?"

"She was born in D.C. But her family moved here when she was 12."

"She moved _to _Avalon?" Darwin questioned. "What on Earth brought them here?"

Erik shrugged. "I don't know. It was my grandfather's idea. I don't remember why. My dad might know."

"Have either of your parents been to the Ash Creek House? Did either of _them_ experience anything here?"

Erik couldn't help but scoff, nearly choked on his scoff, actually. His mother! Here at the Gone-Away House!

"No," he said resoundingly, not able to suppress his disbelieving chuckle. Really. The thought of it! "No way."

"Not even when they were children?" Charles pressed. "Children do things like that, you know."

Because it was Charles who said it, Erik actually pretended to think about it for a moment, answering in a calmer voice.

"Definitely not. My mom was too old, well, old-souled to mess about with juvenile trash like that. Anyway, my grandfather would have flayed her alive. Absolutely murdered her. He hated this house. He thought it should be burned to the ground."

In the pause of his words, clear as crystal, there was a gentle squeak of floorboards under an unexpected weight. Everyone else messed about glancing at each other, wondering who had done it, but Erik didn't bother. His eyes went immediately, certainly, to the source of the sound. To the stairwell.

Slowly, one by one, the other eyes followed his, and although the camera stared blindly into the depths, although the lights lit its nothingness to sunny brightness, Erik felt the something he couldn't see.

In his bones he felt its presence, in his thundering heart, in his burning skin.

There was another creak, quieter now, farther down, retreating, or else beckoning.

Erik was made dizzy by his sudden change of altitude, was surprised to find himself on his feet, grabbed the table to stop himself from going any farther, shocked at himself, chest a sharp, burning ache.

_No, _he reminded himself. _We don't want to go down there. We don't want to follow it._

"What is that?" Charles gasped, staring down between his feet, straining his ears for what Erik could barely make out over the din of his own heartbeat: the muffled clicking of a crank, the metallic rattling of chains.

"It's my mother," someone said, and when he looked up to see who had said it everyone was staring at him—worriedly, curiously, in horror—and he realized it'd been him. He'd said it. And, even worse, the two red eyes of the dual cameras were staring at him, recording him saying it, recording his madness—this had to be madness.

Snatching up his satchel, kicking his chair out of his path by accident, Erik barely heard the complaining cries of forbearance that was thrown up behind him. He went out the backdoor and let it slam behind him.

That was it. He was done.

He was hearing voices in vents. He was tasting dead bodies in water. He was seeing people in phones. He was feeling wounds that left no marks. He was feeling people that weren't there. He was going fucking crazy as a loon.

Erik had never gone mad before. He'd thought he was, for a while maybe, just when his mother had died, when his whole world was upside down, but he'd recovered from that in time and never succumbed again. If he hadn't been driven mad by the loss of his mother then he wasn't going to let himself be driven mad by this house. He wouldn't allow it a greater precedence in his life than his own mother. He had to leave, get away from it, before it amassed that power without his permission. He had to get away, not for his comfort or libido but for his own beleaguered sanity. If Charles couldn't understand that then he wasn't worth it. Despite everything about the man that struck to the contrary, if he lacked this then he wasn't worth it.


	28. Chapter 27

A/N: Sorry it's late! I was camping all weekend. It was a blast, but it's nice to get back to civilization (and my computer) as well! Hope you all had just as nice weekends :)

* * *

Erik checked his trouser pockets. He checked his jacket pockets. He threw the contents of his satchel all across the smothering heat of the back seat, yelling inarticulately at nothing, nothing, _more nothing_.

_Where were his fucking keys?_

He slammed the door as hard as he could and when that didn't get it out of his system he punched it for good measure, hopping on one foot and holding his fist painfully, cursing up a storm.

But the storm passed, leaving him huffing and tingling but clear, capable.

Pushing up from his lean on the car, he stalked to the front door to shout at Charles to give him his fucking keys back.

He could hear the voices as soon as he stepped foot on the first step, and quailed for a second before he recognized the hissing British tones.

"Be serious, Darwin! He's a bit too old for a poltergeist!"

"You saw the video the same as me! What other explanation is there for that? If it started when he was younger—it's not too much to think—"

"It didn't start when he was younger. He's never had something like this happen to him before—he didn't even _believe_ in the paranormal before!"

"So he says."

There was an angry pause, and when Charles' voice returned it was snarling, quaking with anger or fear. "So that's what you think. He's lying. You all think he's pulled the wool over my eyes, he's got one over on me—"

"I think," Darwin growled back, frustrated. "That whatever's going on here, it's coming from him. _Charles, we can't let him leave!"_

Shaking but silent, Erik went back to his car, climbed into the front seat, and locked the doors, ignorant of the stifling heat.

_This isn't happening, this isn't happening, _he repeated to himself, clutching the steering wheel and staring straight ahead. _What was he going to do?_

Call his mother. Call his father. Can't call Emma—she'd tie him to the door if she caught wind of this. Call-

Mark!

He lunged into the back seat enough to scramble for his phone, squeaking with barely contained screams of rage when he remembered it was fucking dead. It was dead. He was dead. They were never going to let him leave. They didn't believe him. They _wouldn't_ believe that it was all internal, that there was nothing there, that he wasn't a poltergeist or a catalyst or some resonating apparatus for ghosts—they wouldn't believe he was mad, even if he was mad, and what else could he be? If Darwin had thought it was all in Erik's head before, that he was making it all up, he apparently didn't believe it any more. He was never getting out, _never_ getting out of here. Shaking his seat in frustration, he stopped when he heard a door slam.

Charles was jogging down the front steps with an angry, sharp snap in his walk, duffel bag weighing down his shoulder. Erik was distracted with hope for a second before he realized it wasn't Charles' overnight bag but his work bag. He clapped his hands over the lock, as if Charles had somehow worked out how to unlock doors with his mind in the last ten minutes.

He only clutched it harder when Charles got close enough to shout at him, "Get out of the car!"

"I'm not going back in there!" he yelled back, voice cracking badly. Knuckles white on the lock, his hands couldn't shake, but the rest of him made up for it, and Charles must have noticed him on the precipice of panic because he stopped in his tracks, hands up and visible, as if Erik was a first-time criminal with an itchy trigger-finger.

Or maybe a snarling animal, backed into a corner, based on the quiet, calming tone of his voice when he spoke. "No, Erik, I know. I'm not going to ask you to go back. I'm not."

Confused, not quite processing or trusting, Erik didn't dare let go of the lock.

Slowly, so as not to alarm him, Charles lowered his hands, opening the duffel bag enough for Erik to see the blanket and muffins there.

"I thought we could go for a picnic. Take a break. It was getting a bit intense in there, eh?"

Erik looked up from the bag to Charles smiling gently, encouragingly. Erik did not understand.

"You've been through a lot this morning, hmm? I thought we could go relax for a minute, just you and I. Get away from it all." _Get away… _"It's such a nice day and all, and the team's got it under control, I think. They can handle it on their end…"

Seeing that Erik was listening, was capable of listening over his remnant horror, Charles' smile took on a sultry tilt.

"Come on—there must be someplace around here where we can spread a little blanket, be by ourselves, enjoy…the sunshine…isn't there?"

Finally the words seemed to filter down to him, and Erik's hands relaxed their grip, tingling, mouth cracking into a hesitant smile. Well, yes, he could think of a place or two nearby where he wouldn't mind being alone with Charles. But he didn't quite unlock the doors yet, watching Charles nervously for a second. The man's smile was sunny and enticing, eyes squinting in the harsh sunlight, exactly as blue as the sky—but his shoulders were squared, determined, the spine straight, taut.

"Do you promise?" Erik found himself asking, fighting an urge to stick his hand out and demand a pinky swear.

Charles' stance seemed to relax, and he smiled widely now.

"I promise. Now, really, pooch, get out of that car. It's got to be forty degrees in there."

Slowly, unwracking his body from where it had been tensed at every joint, Erik managed to unlock the door and step tenderly out, leaning against the car door for a moment, exhausted now that adrenaline was running out. Charles smiled, pityingly, or compassionately and stepped forward with a sad chuckle, fingering the stubble at Erik's jaw.

"You look a sad state, I think," the man said, frowning sympathetically.

Nodding, Erik took the man by the hips, pulling him in a little closer, resting his hands there as on a talisman.

"I don't think I much care for this house."

"No," Charles laughed. "I gathered that much."

"I'm not sorry," he growled suddenly, mostly because he had been about to say that he was sorry. "I'm not sorry. You can't ask me to go back in there. I know it makes it hard between you and Darwin, but I'm not sorry."

Charles just ran his fingers through his hair, unperturbed. "Don't worry about Darwin."

But Erik couldn't quite manage that. Couldn't quite manage not to grin when he asked, "Was he pissed? When you stormed out of there, I mean? When he found out I wasn't coming back?"

Charles' eyes flashed to his for a moment, long enough for Erik to catch their wary sheen, but then they were looking away again, bright and sunny.

"Oh, he's fine. Now come on. Let's lay down a blanket and work on our tans—or whatever it is people do in atrocious heat like this."

Before they started off, Charles stowed his hoodie in the car, skin already flushed with heat, and had Erik leave his jacket there too—he was right that it was much too hot for all these layers, although Erik didn't quite agree with him when the man suggested he leave his shirt there too.

"You've got your undershirt," Charles pointed out. "And this black is only going to make you hotter."

Erik persisted though, pushing Charles' insisted hands away from his buttons.

"I'm not walking around the countryside in my undershirt," he growled, but he did roll up his sleeves, and leave free the buttons Charles had already pried loose.

"Here," Charles said as he led them around the car, into the grass before the puny forest. "Help me with the blanket."

Erik didn't though, just stood and stared, between the spot Charles had picked and the house, not thirty feet away.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me!"

"What?" Charles said, eyes wide and innocent when he looked up from his bag.

"We're not eating _here_! We're not…we're not sitting here right in fucking front of it!"

"Don't be silly!" Charles laughed, yanking the blanket out and struggling to set it up on his own because Erik didn't make a single move to help. Instead, feet planted securely, he growled with all his strength.

"Give me my fucking keys."

"Are you going to help me or what? I say, you back country boys aren't nearly as I'd been led to believe." The man wasn't sounding so flippant though when Erik went back to his car.

"Erik!" Charles squawked, sprinting to slam the door shut before Erik could clamber in.

"I'm not sitting here right in fucking front of it and having it stare at me all day!" he shouted, going for the back seat but Charles lunged that door shut as well.

"Okay!" the man yelped, arms spread wide across the doors so Erik couldn't try again. "Okay, we don't have to! Wherever you want, okay? Just…not too far. Deal?"

Erik just sort of blinked for a moment, staring. Had…had he just won an argument? Against _Charles? _He smiled with a sort of heady disbelief and nodded, helping the Brit take up the blanket. He could only hope he had as much luck when he asked the man to date him.

* * *

"So where are you taking me?" Charles asked, voice hardly showing its pout as he maneuvered carefully around the overgrown blackberry brambles that tried to push them into the creek on their right. Erik looked back, partly to watch the man's progress and partly to enjoy the sight of the Gone-Away House disappearing in the dappled forest behind them.

"There's a lake not too far from here. It'll be packed probably, on a day like today, but I know a nice secluded spot on it," he explained, grinning. Charles looked up from his foot placement, grinning as well.

"You're insatiable. Will you not have your fill till you've crippled me truly?" Erik found that he'd missed the playful teasing, the quirk of Charles' mouth when he was being a smart-aleck—when had that subducted under the brunt of his diligence, his ghost mania? No, Erik couldn't deny that he liked Charles better with no work to distract the man from his own playful harlotness.

"I don't think you'd mind it if I did," he laughed back, reaching to help Charles over a big rock in the creek wall and sliding his arm around the man's waist when he'd overcome it, enjoying the broadening path that eased out into the cow pastures between them and the lake.

"Oh no," Charles said with a roll of the eyes. Erik noticed the man didn't attempt to slip out o fhis arm, his own hand settling on Erik's shoulder. "I've always dreamed of being in a wheelchair. And what a great explanation I'd have. Oh, this old thing? Necessary I'm afraid, when Magnus comes to visit."

Erik laughed outright, having forgotten Charles' pet name. He'd never had anyone name part of his anatomy before—strangely, he thought he _liked_ it. He tightened his grip on the man, pulling him closer to his side, and Charles went with it, nuzzling quickly into his jaw on a downstep before pulling back.

"So is this a common spot for you? Is this where you bring all your lovers?"

"It would be apt," Erik nodded. "The place used to be called Lovers Lake, actually."

"Used to be? What's it called now?"

"Oh…um…well…"

"That good?"

"Corpse Lake."

"My god!"

"It's not that bad! I mean…it's just that for a while it used to smell like…corpses. I think! It was a long time ago—it might just be a story. My mom said it was named that because it's shaped like… I don't know…a skeleton? Danny Delaney in third grade said it's because it used to be an old Indian cemetery before it filled up with water…somehow. Who knows anymore?"

Charles shook his head with disgust.

"You people have too many names for things. And too many creepy stories. No wonder you think everything's haunted!"

"Oh, shut up. Come on, we've got to climb this fence. Keep low—Wilford Townsend owns this farm, and he's a fucking dick."

"What?" Charles laughed, pushing the duffel bag through the gaps in the split rail fence and climbing over after Erik, a bit more dexterously than Erik had expected from him, honestly.

"I'm serious. I heard one of his ancestors beat a kid to death for stealing a fucking horse. The current progenitors aren't far off that mark."

"And you know this from personal experience?" Charles huffed, struggling to keep low to ground as they maneuvered around cow pies.

"Hell no—I never came this far east. My friend Mark came up in high school for some good old fashioned cow tipping, though, and nearly got a gut full of buckshot."

"Ah the rich lives of hillbillies—you should write a screenplay."

"Sorry we can't all live in the den of utopian civilization, _New York City_."

"I don't live in New York City!" Charles mumbled petulantly. "I live in boring, bucolic North Salem, and although I didn't live there as a teenager and can't testify to its more juvenile recreations, I can say that none of my neighbors have ever threatened me with buckshot for trespassing, nor have I been informed of any rampant cow-harrassment."

"Where's North Salem?" Erik questioned, sitting up a little too high in his interest. He crossed his fingers under the blanket he was carrying, hoping against hope that it wasn't as English a town as it sounded. How was he supposed to date a man currently living an ocean away?"

"Oh, a bit north of New York City, admittedly. Just a train line away. But st—what are you smiling about?"

"I'm not smiling!"

"Yes you are—you're absolutely beaming. What's so funny?"

"Nothing," Erik growled, ducking under the last fence peg, stepping into the overgrown underbrush of the lake's brushy forest. "I was just thinking—that's not too far. I mean…I don't know, I was worried you lived in—England or something."

"Why would you worry about that?"

_Tell him, _he thought, intensely, but when he turned to do so, Charles was already reshouldering his bag and asking, suspiciously, "This is a real place we're going to, right? 'Corpse Lake' isn't just the code name you use for where you hide the bodies, is it?"

"Drat," Erik sighed. "You caught me. Now I _have_ you kill you."

Charles just grinned at him, walking backwards down the lake trail with his usual sultry step. "You can't kill me—I'm too good a lay. That's why I always sleep with people straight away, in case they need any convincing of why to keep me around."

"It might be working—I honestly am thinking of keeping you around."


End file.
